Driver Issues

Your computer is composed of a variety of components including hardware, software, and devices. Devices include display devices such as your monitor, input devices like a keyboard and mouse, hard drives, CD-ROM drives, sound devices, printers, scanners, cameras, modems, and so forth. Each device must communicate with the operating system which is accomplished through the use of device drivers.

Device drivers are a type of software that allows access to the device, sets hardware parameters, transmits data to and from memory, handles I/O errors, and facilitates communication between the device, the operating system, and various applications. When everything goes well, the device functions as it should. Occasionally, driver issues arise and the device does not function properly or error messages occur.

Drivers can conflict with each other and cause errors or they can have issues all their own. Driver conflicts can range from generating error messages to full-blown system crashes. Some conflicts are caused when replacing one device with another without having properly disabled the previous device’s driver. Others are caused because the wrong driver is installed or the driver is corrupt. Still more are the result of incompatibility with other devices. More driver issues center around two or more drivers trying to access the same space.

If you’ve recently installed a new device and suddenly have driver issues, the first place to look is at the new device. Did you install the driver that came with it? Is it the most current driver available?

You can use a built-in Windows utility called Device Manager to troubleshoot your driver issues. First, go to Control Panel, and click on Device Manager. You’ll see a listing of all devices installed on your PC. Yellow triangles indicate a problem with a particular device.

Find the type of device it is and click that option in the list. For example, if your sound card is giving you trouble, click on Sound, video and game controllers. This will show all related devices. Find the sound card and double-click.

The Device status area will let you know the status of the device. In this case, this device is working properly. Now click the Driver tab.

Here you will be able to view details about the driver, update it, roll it back to a previously installed driver, disable the device, or uninstall the driver. These options are handy when trying to troubleshoot driver issues.

Some device property boxes contain an additional tab, Resources, which will display a list of conflicting devices as shown below.

You can also go to the manufacturer’s website and see if they have an updated driver available. Many times the manufacturer finds out about driver issues after the product has hit the shelves. They’ll release updated drivers periodically to repair known issues.

Another way to recover from a recently installed device that is causing driver issues is to use the System Restore feature (if enabled) and roll your system back to a date prior to the installation. You’ll at least get your system functioning the way it was before the driver issue while you try to locate the appropriate drivers and solution for your malfunctioning device.