Lesson 3: Installing, Updating, and Troubleshooting Windows Vista Device Drivers

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Lesson 3: Installing, Updating, and Troubleshooting

Windows Vista Device Drivers

Successfully installing Windows Vista does not ensure that all of the hardware devices on the

computer will function correctly. Although Windows Vista includes a significant number of

hardware drivers, there are likely to be some devices, especially more recent ones, that will

require you to manually obtain and install the drivers yourself.

After this lesson, you will be able to:

■ Use Device Manager to install drivers.

■ Use Device Manager to update drivers.

■ Use Device Manager to troubleshoot drivers.

■ Use Windows Update to download current drivers.

Estimated lesson time: 75 minutes

Installing Drivers

Device drivers allow the operating system to interact with a specific piece of hardware. With-

out the device driver, the device often will not work. A scanner without a device driver

installed will not scan and a printer without the correct device driver installed will not print.

A good example of how a device driver can make a difference is with graphics adapters. As a

part of its hardware configuration, a computer might have a graphics adapter that has more

than 256 MB of graphics memory. According to Windows Vista’s specifications, that should

be more than enough to run Aero. If, however, you are unable to locate a device driver writ-

ten for Windows Vista for that particular graphics adapter, Windows Vista assigns it a stan-

dardized VGA graphics adapter driver. The standard VGA graphics adapter allows you to

use Windows Vista but does not allow you to run Aero. Without the correct driver, perfor-

mance of applications, such as games or Computer Aided Design (CAD) programs, will be

poor, and Windows Vista will be able to make only minimal use of the graphics adapter’s high

performance capability. If you are able to obtain a device driver written for Windows Vista for

the graphics adapter, you will experience a massive difference in graphics performance. Aero

will run, CAD performance will improve, and your games will display with improved frame

rates.

During the setup routine, Windows Vista attempts to locate and install as many hardware

device drivers as possible. Most administrators find that most, if not all, of the hardware device

drivers their computer requires are already installed the first time they log on. If a particular

hardware device driver is not detected and installed automatically, it is possible to use Device

Manager to manually install driver software located on CD-ROM or downloaded from the

Internet.