Why Do You Need to Update Your PCs Drivers?

Why Do You Need to Update Your PCs Drivers?:

When someone refers to drivers when talking about a computer, they mean device drivers. A device driver is a software program that lets the software programs interact with the hardware devices in or attached to your computer.  No matter how carefully the manufacturer tests the drivers for their hardware, sometimes  they will interact with another program on the computer and not work. Manufacturers will provide updates to correct any problems that users have encountered.

Manufacturers also release new versions of their drivers to add new or enhance old features of their hardware.  If you want to get the new features you will have to update the driver.
The most important thing to know is that device drivers are operating system specific.  That means that drivers for windows XP will not work on Vista nor will they work on Windows 7.
You can download drivers from the hardware manufacturer’s website, the operating system’s website or one of the websites that specialize in driver downloads.

Downloading and Installing Device Drivers

There are several different ways to download and install device drivers but the easiet is to use the Windows Device Manager.

Windows Device Manager

• Select  Start->Control Panel-> Performance and maintenance->System, the System Properties window shown below

• Then go to the Hardware tab, and click the Device Manager Button.
• In the Device Manger window you will see a list of different categories of hardware on your PC as shown below

•  Identify the hardware that needs to be updated, and then double-click on it to open the device properties dialog box shown below for a graphics controller

• In this dialog box, you will see device details like device driver version, manufacturers’ name, device model number, etc. Options such as Update Driver or Rollback Driver are also available to enable you to perform various PC maintenance tasks.
• When you click the Update Driver button on the driver tab of the properties dialog box, the Hardware Update wizard will display. You can use this wizard to update your driver. To update the driver the wizard will ask you for the location from which you want to install the update from.

Summary

Updating device drivers is part of the routine maintenance you should perform on your PC if you want to get the best performance possible.