Updating Device Drivers

Hardware manufacturers like to keep loyal customers. One of the best ways to keep customers loyal is to continuously update and improve hardware drivers. Often times, drivers can be updated and improved to squeeze just a little bit more performance out of a devicedrivers for video adapters and network adapters are updated more often than other types of devices for just this reason. Other times, a manufacturer may discover a bug or other coding error in a previously released driver and issue an updated driver in an effort to correct the problem. This can occur even in cases in which the driver has been certified by the WHQL.

Device drivers can be updated in several ways, including using a manufacturer's setup utility or by using Device Manager. In this section, we examine how to update device drivers via Device Manager.

1. Click Start, Settings, Control Panel.

2. Double-click the System icon, or right-click the My Computer icon on the Desktop and click Properties from the shortcut menu, and select the Hardware tab.

3. Click the Device Manager button.

4. Expand the device type that you wish to change.

5. Right-click the specific device you wish to modify and select Properties from the context menu.

6. Click the Driver tab, as shown in Figure 4.7.

   Figure 4.7. Working with device drivers.

   

7. Click the Update Driver button to start the Hardware Update Wizard.

8. Select either an automatic installation or a manual installation. The manual installation states that it is an advanced option, but in reality it is the best way to get to your updated driver file assuming that you know where it is.

9. Follow through the rest of the steps in the Update Device Driver Wizard to install the updated device driver file on your computer.

The process to update drivers is very simple but very important. Expect to be tested on this in one way or another.