What is a Device Driver ?
A Device Driver is a set of files that drives your hardware and devices. To understand this consider each of your computer hardware like your Printer, Sound Card, Motherboard, Display or Video Card, Modem, Camera, USB devices etc as a vehicle. Each vehicle needs a driver who knows how to drive that vehicle like a car, train, ship, truck, aeroplane etc. Similarly each of the hardware devices that is installed in your computer or the external hardware like your printer, camera, phones and other USB devices will require a set of files called drivers that will drive that device or hardware.
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Why do you Need a Device Driver ?
Any hardware installed in your PC & Laptop or any hardware you buy will need a Device Driver. To understand this consider that you opened a document or photo and used the "Print" Command. Your computer's operating system like Windows 7 or XP or Vista will send an instruction to the printer through the printer port where your printer is connected. The Print instruction is sent in the Windows Machine Language. This language may not be understood by your Printer. So your Printer may either not print at all or prints some garbage and waste your paper. So to make your Printer understand the instruction sent by Windows, the Device Drivers will convert the Print instructions to a language that your Printer understands. Then the page prints out the way you designed on your PC. Thus we can say that a Device Driver is an interface that converts the Windows machine language to the language that a hardware understands. Every hardware needs its own Device Driver.
Why some Hardware ask for Driver CD ?
Microsoft Windows Operating System usually comes with most Device Drivers in its installation CD or DVD. But today there are over 20 million hardware devices available in the market. It is not humanly possible to put all these millions of drivers in to the Windows Installation CD. So Microsoft packs only a few common drivers of hardware that is most popular in the market from reputed brands like Dell, HP, Lenovo, Sony, Creative, HCL, ATI, Gateway, Realtek, Gigabyte, Acer, Asustek, Nikon, etc for essential hardware like your motherboard, sound cards, video cards, display or monitor, mouse, keyboards, usb, cameras, printers, scanners, cameras, ipods, phones, speakers, other audio cards or devices, directx, hard drives, CD, DVD roms etc without which a PC or Laptop computer cannot work. But when you assemble your own computer from vairous parts bought separately or buy a newly introduced hardware you will require the device driver CD/DVD which will have the exact model specific drivers in it. Usually the Device Driver CD comes packed with the hardware. But the CD may contain Drivers for many hardware models out of which you will need to select the correct driver for your hardware.
What is WHQL Certified Device Drivers ?
Microsoft packs only those drivers into the Windows installation CD that actually pass the Windows Hardware Quality Lab tests. These drivers are fully compatible with all versions of Windows Operating system. These are also called WHQL Certified Drivers. You can confidently install WHQL Certified drivers into your PC or Laptop because these drivers are Certified for Windows operating system. So next time you download drivers ensure they are WHQL Certified.
Back up of Device Drivers already installed in your PC or Laptop especially after you have lost your Original Driver CD is a big problem, because Device Drivers are stored in various locations in your computer. Each hardware has more than 10 driver files stored in different locations of your computer. And there are more than a dozen hardware devices and software drivers installed in your PC or Laptop. To make a backup of all the drivers installed in your PC or Laptop you may use a professional software like driver detective. It scans all the drivers installed in your PC and displays the result. All you need to do is to select the specific drivers or all drivers to backup and insert a blank CD/DVD or a USB drive to back the drivers. Driver Detective makes a single .exe file on your CD or USB containing all the drivers installed in your computer along with all the Windows Registry Entries. You can use this backup .exe file to install all the drivers later to your PC after a Windows re-installation or to many computers in your home or office with same hardware configuration. The best part is that the job driver installation can be done with a single mouse click on the driver backup exe file.
How to Install Drivers ?
Installing Drivers is very easy to do. Most drivers are installed for common hardware like your sound, video, motherboard, mouse keyboard, usb ports etc. But if you have some other hardware like Printer, Scanner, Digital Camera, iPods, Phones, additional video cards, sound cards, etc then you will need their original drivers that came in a CD or USB drive. Because all the hardware models, especially the hardware that was manufactured after the Windows Operating system you have in your PC was released will not be supported with the generic drivers installed with Windows 7, XP or Vista.
What are Generic Drivers ?
Generic Drivers are those drivers that will give a hardware the minimum functionality. Generic drivers are loaded for your sound, video, display, monitor, mouse, keyboards, modem etc. These drivers are not model or manufacturer specific. So you will not get all the functions that a manufacturer has built into the hardware. For this you will need to install drivers from the manufacturer's driver disk. But in most cases generic drivers work on mouse, keyboard, hard disks, cd roms etc as you may have noticed. But some additional keys on your mouse or keyboards will not work unless you install the drivers specifically stored in the driver disk.
During installation of a new hardware, the driver CD that comes with the hardware is used to install its drivers. If you install a wrong driver like the driver for a different model of your hardware then you will find Windows Error Message saying Corrupted Drivers or re-install drivers. Sometimes, when you install a new driver for a hardware device, some driver files already existing in your computer which is required by some other device as well gets overwritten with the new driver file. Your new hardware may work with this device driver very well. But the other hardware which required the older version of driver which you had over written with new driver file will stop functioning and Windows Error Message Corrupted drivers or Missing Drivers starts popping up. In such cases you can roll back the driver if your other hardware is more important. Most likely your new hardware will work with the old driver with limited functionality and some features may get turned off. But older hardware may not work with new version of same driver files. Next time you see Missing or Corrupted Drivers remember to Update Your Device Drivers.
Why Update Drivers Online ?
If your computer is fully functional and connected to the internet, then you must go to the hardware manufacturer website and download the latest updated drivers for the exact model number of your hardware. This is because the CD contains drivers which are older than even your hardware manufacture date. Many new features are introduced by manufacturer into old hardware and a lot of bugs are fixed over a period of time as people keep reporting hardware problems to them. These are fixed and new drivers are released as regularly as every month in the manufacturer's website which the user must regularly download and install to get more value for the money spent on your hardware.
Wrong Drivers Permanently Damage Hardware ?
There are thousands of sites that let you download drivers. Remember that wrong drivers can damage your hardware, at times permanently. So never download drivers from any site other than the original manufacturer website. This is because the other sites will give you driver files which are bundled with spyware, viruses, trojans etc that does more harm to your computer and even steal your sensitive data like your credit card numbers, internet banking usernames and passwords. So there is all the more reason to download drivers from the authentic manufacturer websites only.
Today you don't need to waste time searching for the correct drivers for your hardware on the internet. Usually you search for drivers only when your hardware fails to work or you get Windows Errors on Corrupted Drivers or Missing Driver Files. So you update only those drivers that give you problems. But remember that new drivers are regularly released by the manufacturer that fix bugs and give more new features to your hardware. So it is important to Update all the Drivers of all Hardware Devices installed in your PC or Laptop for improved hardware performance with new features and also to increase the overall performance of your PC. Some times PC Freezes or Crashes when there are conflicts in driver files. All these problems will get sorted out with updated drivers. But since you can't update drivers every month due to the frustration and time wasted in to searching for drivers, experts strongly recommend using a feature rich Automatic Driver Download Tool like Driver Detective specifically designed for Windows 98, 2000, ME, XP Vista & Windows 7 and it works on all Windows 32 bit and 64 bit Versions.
How Does Driver Detective Work ?
Driver Detective is designed to Update all Device Drivers for all the Hardware installed in your PC & Laptop with a single mouse click. Driver Detective was first released in 1996. Since then the software company has made a database of every device driver for all the computer hardware that was ever manufactured in the world. This was a painful and ongoing process. Today it has the largest Device Driver Database with more than 20,000,000 device drivers. When you download, install and run Driver Detective first it will detect your computer model and operating system. Then it detects all your installed hardware and device drivers which it will compare with its own driver database and gives you a report on which of your drivers are out of date and new drivers are available for download. When you click Fix Drivers, it will download the latest drivers and installs them automatically. You will never again get an error like missing driver or corrupted drivers.
Driver Detective is designed to work on all Windows Computers (Windows 7 XP Vista ME 2000 & 98). Today there are over 126 million PC users in over 100 countries worldwide who use Driver Detective to Update all PC Drivers Automatically in 3 minutes. Driver Detective is available in English, Spanish, French, Polish, German and many more languages.
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