Most USB Drivers are already available either in your Windows Driver Folders or in your USB device itself. At times the USB driver also come as a CD for installation along with your USB Devices like your USB Printers, USB Scanners, USB Pen drives, USB external hard disks, USB Phones etc. Sometimes finding the exact model number specific device drivers may be hard to find.
Cannot Find USB Drivers Online ?
Download Driver Detective in case you are unable to find the correct manufacturer and model specific USB Drivers or you want to save time and effort required to search for USB drivers. Driver Detective is a small 1 mb software with inbuilt machine intelligence capable of Automatically Scan & Detect all the hardware and device drivers installed in your PC/Laptop, compare it with the latest device driver versions available online and then present you with a details Driver Status Report.
Driver Detective scans your computer and presents you with a detailed Driver Status Report which will contain all the information about all your PC/Laptop hardware including the USB Drivers for devices which are not even presently connected to your USB ports and all the driver installed in your computer as well as the latest driver versions available for download on your original hardware manufacturer websites. It also tells you how many of your drivers are corrupted or missing and which all drivers are out of date. Once you get the Driver Status Report of your computer you can individually download one device driver at a time yourself or you can Click on the Update Drivers Button to make Driver Detective download and install the Latest manufacturer and model number specific Windows Drivers in the Automatic mode. Driver Detective updates all your Windows Device Drvers in under 3 minutes depending on which all drivers you select for download.
How USB Drivers Work?
USB Drivers work entirely different from other device drivers. Normally you would install or plug in your device like a printer, scanner, sound card, video card, modem. The USB Device is like a new student entering a class room who introduces himself with his name to the teacher and the fellow students. Similarly, when you insert a USB device into your USB port, the USB device identifies itself to Windows without Windows asking it. The USB device will tickle Windows to recognize it by telling all the details about what device it is wheather it is a USB phone, USB pen drive, USB external hard disk, USB Printer, USB Camera etc. The USB device will also tell what functions it can perform and which drivers it needs and then all that Windows needs to do is to find the required USB drivers in its own driver database. The USB device even informs Windows that it already has the necessary drivers required to be installed on any Windows 32/64 bit version contained in it ust in case Windows driver database does not have them. Windows is thus able to load the USB drivers with in seconds and your USB device becomes ready for use.
Corrupted or Missing USB Device Drivers?
Many standard USB drivers are commonly used by many USB devices like keyboard, mouse, etc. Some times when you buy a new USB device, and then install new USB drivers required by that new USB hardware which came separately with the device, it is quite possible that an older USB driver is over written. Your new hardware will work without any problem, but the newly installed USB driver may not work with older hardware that required an older driver version. In this case you will find that Windows give a warning that new USB Device is not recognized or Your USB drivers are corrupted or Windows USB Drivers are Missing etc. To overcome these USB Driver problems you can either reinstall the older drivers for the other USB device which is failing to work after the new USB device driver installation or you can use the Windows Driver Revert Back option or you can use the Windows System Restore function to get your computer back to the same configuration as it was before the new USB driver installation. Alternately Download Driver Detective to Automatically Update your Windows 7 XP Vista ME 98 2000 2003 2008 USB Device Drivers.
USB Device Not Recognized by Windows ?
Usually when you insert a USB device it gets recognized immediately and the necessary USB drivers are loaded by Windows and your USB device is ready to be used. Very often you insert a USB device and Windows fails to recognize the USB device. Some times you may get a Windows warning that Device Not Recognized. This happens when the USB device drivers are not available neither in Windows driver database nor loaded into the memory from the USB device itself. Updating the USB device driver is the only solution. You may use the USB device driver disk or search and download the required USB drivers from manufacturer website or you may use the Windows Update feature.
Damaged USB Port or USB Device
The other reason for your USB device not being recognized by Windows is that your USB device contact pins or the pins in the USB port of your computer are misaligned or broken due to constant inserting and removing the USB device. At times the USB port may go totally unusable. One method is to use a USB port extension cord. This is a small one meter long cord that connects to your PC USB port and on the other end you can connect your USB device. This prevents your computer USB port from getting damaged as you insert and remove many USB devices and it also gives you an easy access to USB port which can now be lying on your table. If the cord pins are broken you can replace it for very low cost. But if the pins on your USB device is broken then the USB device goes unserviceable. So you have to be careful when you are inserting and removing USB devices. Never apply force while inserting a USB connector or device. If your USB device itself is damaged then any amount of inserting or updating USB drivers will not help. You may have to replace the damaged device.
Why USB port was invented ?
A group of seven companies in the year 1994 started development on USB (Universal Serial Bus) namely Compaq, DEC, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NEC and Nortel. The aim was to make it easier to connect external devices to computers by replacing the multitude of connectors at the back of your PC, that would simplify software configuration of all devices connected to USB, and at the same time permits greater data transfer rates for external devices. The first silicon for USB was made by Intel in 1995.
Originally, in Windows if you had to install a new hardware like a printer, modem, sound card, video card etc, you had to first switch off your computer, fix the hardware and then restart. Even if you connect your printer to the printer port, Windows never recognized that a new hardware has been attached till the time you restart your PC/Laptop because Windows searched for a new device or hardware only during startup. Once detected, you had to wait for the Windows to completely load after which Windows would ask you to insert a driver CD if it fails to detect the required drivers in its database. Then you had to insert a driver disk and tell Windows to search for the correct drivers and install that driver. Once again Windows will not let you use the newly added hardware for which you have loaded the driver because Windows could load the driver into its memory only during restarts. This meant that you had to restart your PC once again to be able to use your hardware.
To obviate this repeated restarts everytime you added or removed a hardware the USB port, USB devices and USB Drivers were invented. The USB devices can be plugged in or pulled out without switching and restarting your computer at any time. This will extend the life of your computer components because they are not continuously powered on. For example your USB external hard disk used for data storage will have much longer life for this reason. Update your USB Device Drivers and get the best value for the money you spent buying the USB hardware.
Greater Data Transfer Rates with Newer USB Drivers
Amazingly, the data transfer rates continued to increase with each new USB specification came. Classic example is your USB pen drives and USB external hard drives. In 1996 USB 1.0 device drivers gave the usb hardware a good data transfer rates of 12 Mbits/Sec. Then came the USB 2.0 driver specifications which boosted the data transfer rates on USB devices to 480 Mbits/Second. Then came the next generation USB 3.0 drivers in 2010 which boosted the data transfer rates on your USB devices to over 5 Gbits/Second. Most of your USB devices will have some generic drivers preloaded in your Windows installation. However, manufacturer and model specific USB drivers will be required to run special usb equipment like your USB Printers, USB Cameras, USB Phones, USB Media Players etc which will let you to use all the advanced features and functions of your USB devices.
What are Generic USB Drivers ?
Most USB Drivers are very common like your printer, scanner, mouse, keyboards, usb pen drives, usb hard disks etc. However all USB drivers are not common. Your computer never asks you for a USB driver disk of your USB pen drive, USB mouse, USB keyboards etc because they are capable of running on generic Windows USB drivers. These generic USB drivers are capable of giving your hardware some basic functions like your USB keyboard can be detected by Windows and most of its alphabet and numeral keys work. But if there are some advanced buttons for volume, sleep, power off, internet explorer etc, these buttons will not function unless you download and install the USB drivers specific to the exact manufacturer and model number of your USB keyboard. This is true for all the other devices also which connect through USB ports. Thus if you want to get the maximum benefit from your costly USB keyboard you need to get the latest USB drivers and install them. Use Download Driver Detective to Update all the Latest USB Drivers for all your USB hardware from each of your original hardware manufcturer websites in minutes without wasting time searching for USB Drivers one at a time.
How many USB Devices can be used on One Computer?
Most people do not know that they can insert hundreds of usb devices into their computer. You can connect a USB Hub to your USB port. This means that you can actually connect 127 different divices to one USB port. The problem is that the current is shared between these 127 devices and some of them may not work as the power required by them may be more than what the shared power is. Thus if you find that your USB device is not working, then try reducing the number of USB devices connected to each port of your computer and even think of reducing the total number of USB devices connected at any given time before you start looking for downloading USB drivers.
Update USB Drivers to Speedup Your PC Performance
Updated USB Drivers are reguarly released by all reputed USB device manufactures for devices like Digital Cameras, Mobile Phones, Printers, Keyboards, Mouse, Scanners, external modems, external hard disks and such other USB hardware. These new USB drivers will give your computer and USB devices a lot of bug fixes and many new features introduced after you bought your USB hardware. Thus you save money which you would have otherwise spent to buy a new USB device because updated USB drivers make your old USB device to work as good as a new USB device thus Optimizing your Computer for High Performance.
Driver Detective is an Automatic Driver Download and Driver Update software that can locate, download and install the latest WHQL Certified Device Drivers for all hardware installed in your PC/Laptop specific to your Windows operating system in less than 3 minutes. Driver Detective can even make a back up of all your installed drivers from your computer to a CD/USB in a single mouse click. Updating all the latest device drivers for all the hardware in your PC may take many hours. But with Driver Detective you can accomplish this task in just 2 mouse clicks and a few minutes. Updated Drivers give bug fixes and ensures you get all the latest features in your old hardware without spending any extra money and will also speedup your computer performance. Driver Detective is used by over 125 million PC users world wide from over a 100 countries. I have been using it for over 2 years and strongly recommend you to Download Driver Detective to help your Download and Install latest USB Drivers for all your USB Devices and all other hardware installed in your computer. It works on Windows 7 XP Vista Me 98 2000 2008 & 2003.
Automatically Update All Your Drivers in 3 Minutes with Driver Detective
