With the advent of Windows 7, it would be nice to report that Windows driver problems are a thing of the past. Unfortunately, driver problems are here to stay as long as Windows uses drivers to interface with hardware.

Solving Driver Problems Is Crucial

Driver problems can render a new (or old) piece of hardware completely useless, or they can disable hardware functions. Driver problems can seem to crop up suddenly, especially following an upgrade or addition of some sort, or they can plague a piece of hardware from the day you take it out of the box. There are literally millions of drivers out there. Finding the correct driver for your hardware lies somewhere between science and art these days.

For the last several major revisions, Windows has been equipped with the ability to identify and load the “correct” driver for your attached hardware. That sounds good because it means less work for the end user, right? In practice, however, Windows gets it wrong sometimes, and loading the wrong driver can be just as disastrous as not having a driver at all.

Windows comes with a number of specific and generic drivers, to be sure. For some common hardware, the user needs to look no farther than Windows itself. For other hardware, users must rely on the hardware manufacturer to write and update drivers as needed. When a manufacturer decides that it will no longer update a driver, that decision becomes a kiss of death for the no-longer-supported hardware. The next OS patch or revision may render the unsupported device completely useless.

There’s little the end user can do once a decision is made to drop support for a piece of hardware. Don’t assume that the hardware that’s being dropped is old, either. Many pieces of hardware have lifespans measured in months because the manufacturer has decided not to support the device any longer.

For the most part, however, you can get good results from using a driver management program like Driver Detective to find, install and update your computer’s complement of hardware drivers. Driver Detective has been downloaded and used millions of times to manage hardware drivers.

Driver Detective works on all versions of Windows, and can help keep your computer up-to-date on drivers. Using the most updated drivers can help you avoid more serious problems down the road.

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It’s easy… almost nice… to blame someone else for a problem you’ve encountered with your computer. Unfortunately, the largest trouble source for a computer is usually the operator! How do you recover from something you’ve done yourself… like loading the wrong driver onto your computer?

Many Actions Can Cause Driver Problems

If you’ve ever had one of those “Homer Simpson moments” … you know… the kind that make you say “D’oh!”… you know what I’m talking about. You’ve done something that’s admittedly stupid, and you’ve recognized the error of your ways a split-second too late to correct it or prevent damage. The damage always seems directly proportional to the ease with which you were allowed to shoot yourself in the foot, too.

This is especially difficult to deal with when you do something unfortunate to your computer. Correcting self-inflicted damage can take hours, sometimes days. The problem can be made more difficult to solve when symptoms don’t occur right away or you don’t know what to do to “undo” your mistake.

When it comes to drivers for the Windows OS, I recommend that users invest in a driver management program called Driver Detective. Driver Detective will automatically located, download and install the correct driver for your computer’s hardware every time. It also backs up your existing driver set so you can easily revert back to your former drivers if you don’t like the way your computer operates, or you run into trouble after a driver upgrade or reinstallation takes place.

Driver Detective keeps working to monitor your drivers once they’re installed. If a driver becomes corrupted, gets deleted accidentally or gets updated by the manufacturer, you’re all set! Driver Detective will replace corrupted and missing drivers, and will locate, download and install driver updates.

You can’t get better service, except from a professional technician. Driver Detective has been downloaded and used more than 1,000,000 times by users around the world and it works hard to keep your computer in good working order.

Using driver management software like Driver Detective is a good idea for users who want to keep their systems up-to-date but don’t have the experience to do this on their own and don’t have the money to pay a professional computer technician to do the work for them.

You can download and try Driver Detective free and it works on any version of Windows!

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There are few things worse than a slow computer. Ok, there are many things worse than a slow computer, but working with a slow computer is maddening. If you can work faster than your computer, there’s probably a problem somewhere along the line. Although not the first suspects, Windows driver problems can cause severe performance degradations.

Bad Drivers Can Slow Your Computer Down
There are about a zillion things that can cause a computer to slow down, so troubleshooting a speed issue can be difficult. If you have the patience to locate the problem, you’re one step ahead of the game.

With speed problems, you want to know what the computer’s processor is doing and what the computer’s memory is doing. When these two resources are taxed, you can expect your computer to slow down. Windows comes with a performance monitor that can help you determine how much of your computer’s memory is in use, and how much of the processor is being used.

You can also use the Task Manager in Windows to find out what programs are running and how much of the processor’s capacity each application is consuming. If you have one process that’s taking up 90% of the processor, shut that application down using the Task Manager and see if your problem improves. It’s also a good idea to reboot the computer, particularly if an application has gone “walkabout” on you. Restarting the computer can clear out other problems in the OS or memory that may have caused the application to misbehave in the first place.

Once you restart your computer, look at the Performance Monitor and the Task Manager again. If the problem persists, scan your computer for viruses and malware that could be causing bad performance. Get rid of whatever you find.
You can also check your drivers. A missing, bad or corrupted driver can wreak havoc on your system. It can significantly increase the time it takes for your computer to boot, and it can also cause hardware malfunctions and other system-related problems.

To diagnose driver problems, unload your drivers and reload them manually one at a time. If you find the offender, uninstall it and re-install a fresh copy of the driver. Test your system to see if your speed problems improve. If unloading and reloading all of your drivers manually sounds like a chore, it is. You could also use a driver manager like Driver Detective. This program can automatically spot bad drivers, or drivers that are missing or in need of an update. Using Driver Detective to manage your drivers won’t solve all of your speed problems, but it will eliminate most of your concerns about your Windows drivers.

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Window 7 isn’t yet out of the gate for most consumers, and for as much trouble as Microsoft has gone through to ensure a smooth release, Windows 7 is likely to encounter a few bumps and bruises along the way. What’s most likely to take the fun out of your new OS upgrade? The usual suspects – driver problems, hardware incompatibilities, and memory problems.

Older Hardware May Not Work So Well With Windows 7

Microsoft has been working hard to help ensure that the latest drivers are available and compatible with Windows 7, but users who have older hardware may be in for a surprise. Often, manufacturers don’t support older hardware and may not provide an updated driver. And don’t be confused by the term “older.” “Older” could mean hardware that was made in 2007 or 2008.

Generally, if you’re running Windows Vista and you’ve got all of your driver ducks in a row, you’re not likely to experience much in the way of problems. What runs on Vista should for the most part, run on Windows 7. After all, Windows 7 was built on the Vista platform. If you’re running an older version of the OS – like Windows XP or older – all bets are seriously, completely and thoroughly off. You may be able to find a driver from the manufacturer or you may be able to find a third-party driver that interfaces your hardware with Windows 7. If you’re supremely talented, you might be able to write your own driver, but that’s not something for the uninitiated, so that’s not a realistic solution for most people.

Don’t forget that Windows 7 has a built-in Windows XP virtual machine. You can run Windows XP virtually within Windows 7, and in the virtual environment, your old XP drivers will still work. This is probably the most likely workaround for XP fans who adopt Window 7 earlier rather than later.

The issue of signed and unsigned drivers will also continue to cause problems for people who migrate to Windows 7. Basically, a “signed” driver includes information about the author, who swears on a stack of DOS disks that the driver is authentic, hasn’t been altered since it was released and, in theory, works the way it should An “unsigned” driver isn’t as trustworthy – after all, who knows where it came from, right? The idea behind a signed driver is security. If the driver is “signed” it should be unaltered from the original and should be safer. Windows Vista and Windows 7 want signed drivers. You can turn this desire off in the configuration for the computer, but that disables a “security” feature and will open your computer up to the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. (Or might, anyway.)
Driver availability will be less of a problem. Microsoft has been working hard since July to ensure that many drivers are available on Zero Day. I believe Windows adopters will be pleasantly surprised by Windows 7, at least in this aspect.

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