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

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Quick Check

1. Which categories of drivers does Windows Vista allow users without administra-

tor privileges to install?

2. What are the three Windows Update Driver Settings?

Quick Check Answers

1. Drivers signed by the Windows Signing Authority and drivers signed from sources

on the trusted publishers list

2. Check Automatically For Drivers Each Time A Device Is Connected, Ask The User

Whether To Perform The Check When A New Device Is Connected, and Never

Check Windows Update For New Drivers

Troubleshooting Drivers

Troubleshooting drivers is the art of determining which hardware device driver is causing a

system stability problem. Often, it is quite easy to figure this out. If the hardware works on a

computer with a different operating system but not on Windows Vista, you can conclude that

the hardware is not broken. If the hardware does not work on any operating system, you

would suspect that the hardware was causing the problem.

Hardware device driver problems manifest in several ways:

■

The device the driver manages does not work

This diagnosis is relatively simple to make.

For example, when connected to a Windows XP Professional computer, documents sent

to a color laser printer print successfully. When the same printer is connected to a Win-

dows Vista computer, documents sent to the color laser printer do not print. In this sit-

uation, you would suspect the driver.

■ The device the driver manages works erratically This is more difficult to diagnose because

it might not happen every time. Over time, however, you would notice that the computer

would sometimes crash when you tried to do the same thing. If the computer crashed

once every five times you tried to print a document, you would eventually figure out that

there was something wrong with the printer driver.

■ Windows Vista encounters a STOP error when the device is being used STOP errors man-

ifest themselves as a blue screen with white text. Often, the text provides a hint as to what

has caused the STOP error. By default, Windows Vista dumps kernel memory to %SYS-

TEMROOT%\MEMORY.DMP and then reboots. One way of ensuring that you get the

details of a STOP error down is to prevent Windows Vista from automatically rebooting.

This procedure is discussed in this lesson’s practice session.

■ Error or warning dialog boxes appear on the screen when the device is in use The error

message might relate to something else, or a program might crash when you attempt