Chapter 18. Hardware


A PC contains several pounds of wires, slots, cards, and chipsenough hardware to open a TrueValue store. Fortunately, you don't have to worry about making all of your PC's preinstalled components work together. In theory, at least, the PC maker did that part for you. (Unless you built the machine yourself, that is. In that case, best of luck.)

But adding new gear to your computer is another story. For the power user , hard drives, flash drives , cameras , printers, scanners , network cards, video cards, keyboards, monitors , game controllers, palmtop cradles, and other accessories all make life worth living. When you introduce a new piece of equipment to the PC, you must hook it up and install its driver , the software that lets a new gadget talk to the rest of the PC.

UP TO SPEED
The Master Compatibility List

Remember that Windows Vista is much different from Windows XP. Discovering that a piece of your existing equipment is now flaky or nonfunctional is par for the course.

If you'd like to eliminate every glitch and every shred of troubleshooting inconvenience, limit your add-on gear to products that pass the testthe one administered by the Vista Upgrade Advisor. That's a little program you can download from this Web site:

www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/upgradeadvisor

It runs fine in Vista. However, it's really designed to run in Windows XP, on the premise that you'll want to know how many of your peripherals won't work before you install Vista. (The Upgrade Advisor takes the place of the old Hardware Compatibility List [HCL], an online list of every gadget and program on earth that had been shown to work with Windows XP.)

After you download the Advisor program, plug in all your external gadgetsscanners, printers, hard drives, and so onand then run the program.


The driver issue is a chronic, nagging worry for the average Windows fan, however. Drivers conflict; drivers are missing; drivers go bad; drivers go out of date.

Fortunately, in Vista, Microsoft continues to hammer away at the driver problem. Vista comes with thousands upon thousands of drivers for common products already built in, and Microsoft deposits dozens more on your hard drive, behind the scenes, with every Windows Update (page 614). Chances are good that you'll live a long and happy life with Windows Vista without ever having to lose a Saturday manually configuring new gizmos you buy for it, as your forefathers did.

This chapter guides you through installing accessory gadgets and their driversand counsels you on what to do when the built-in, auto-recognizing drivers don't do the trick.


Note: Chapter 17 contains additional hardware-installation details specific to printers.



Windows Vista. The Missing Manual
Windows Vista: The Missing Manual
ISBN: 0596528272
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 284
Authors: David Pogue

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