Driver Hunting

I recently had to reformat a few computers for a friend. Not a hard task, but my mind was thinking forward to what was to come. After the reformatting is done and the the operating systems loaded, I would have to go out and gather all the proper computer drivers.

Drivers are the software that enable the various hardware devices to interact with your operating system. There is a sound driver, a driver for your network interface, a driver for your video card, etc. There are Windows drivers that are capable of working with some hardware, while other hardware requires specific drivers in order to operate properly, or operate at all!

Different computer use different hardware, so ...four different computers, four different sets of driver downloads! I check each computer to identify the devices that are in need of specific drivers. To do this, I go to 'control panel', then to 'system', then to 'hardware' and finally 'device manager'. Once in 'device manager', you can identify devices that need driver updates by the yellow, caution sign that has a question mark in it. These were computers with Windows Xp on them, but the step are close to identical for Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Once all the necessary drivers are identified, it's time to load them up. Considering you have all the proper drivers, just install, return to the 'device manager' and right-click on the device. Choose 'update driver', wait for the driver wizard to open and point it to the place that the device driver was installed. Let the wizard do the rest.

I followed the procedure four times and completed the job, but it is always annoying when you have to hunt for drivers.