Resolved requesting info on driver maintenance

There are a number of programs which will scan your computer for outdated drivers - these should be avoided, many are a scam and demand payment for drivers. Avoid!

Do not get paranoid about having the latest drivers for your system - if it is working well then leave well alone. The latest drivers are not necessarily the best for your system particularly if it is a few years old - graphics drivers are a good example here, although any bug fixes are beneficial

As with BIOS updates the added functionality may well not be relevant to your system.

Drivers drive hardware, the functionality of software is within the software itself and software is often updated to fix bugs or add increased functionality.

Many driver updates will include instructions on how to update - nowadays it is not uncommon for updated drivers to be installed over the top of the existing driver. Some drivers cannot be uninstalled as such as Windows will reinstall automatically when the computer is booted up again as the hardware involved is necessry for operation of the system.

If the driver is not on the System it is unlikely to be required and updated drivers will not be in the system even if you have downloaded them and saved to disk. They only enter the system when installed.

The only safe way of finding updated drivers is to go to the hardware manufacturer's web site - the computer manufacturer may well post updated drivers on their web site and this is a secondary option.

Windows Update will offer you updated drivers from time to time - this option should be avoided - surprisingly, even though offered by MS, they can cause issues. Stick with the manufacturer's web site.

Device Manager will give you the detail of the hardware installed on your computer and if this is insufficient System Information Windows (SIW) will give you more info than you can readily digest!

Bottom Line - if it ain't broke don't fix it

 

What's the difference between hardware, software, firmware and drivers?

In a nutshell:

Hardware are the actual components that you can touch, see, etc., e.g. monitor, keyboard, DVD drive, case, anything inside the case, etc.

System software is software that allows you to command the hardware, e.g. operating systems & its utilities.

Application software are used to perform specific tasks and work, e.g. Web browser, Word, Excel, Photoshop, CD/DVD burning software, etc.

Firmware is a type of software that is written to and stored on a ROM (read only memory) chip which exists on the motherboard or circuit board inside the hardware component, e.g. CD and DVD drives have circuit boards with ROM chips. The firmware is a set of instructions that dictate & regulate what the device does.

Drivers are a type of software instruction set that control how the device does what it does, and permits communication to occur between the devices and system and/or application software. Most all operating systems comes a set of generic drivers for most hardware, or come with drivers for specific brands of hardware, e.g. Windows 7 comes with drivers for some HP printers, etc.

 

I'll respond next week - away now for the holidays.

 

Look in Device Manager
Right click on the Device and select Properties->look in the Drivers tab then click on the Drivers Detail button.... It will tell you the name of the driver and where it is located.

When installing new drivers - you can save them to ANY folder whos name you can remember. You can then use the browse button and drill down to the folder....

 

As Steve posted ...

So you create a folder 'Drivers' and save each driver you download into an appropriate sub folder, e.g. 'Graphics' for graphics drivers, 'Ethernet' for ethernet drivers, etc

 

On OEM computers (dell, compaq, hp, etc) one may see a folder on the c drive called Drivers. These are the driver installation programs and they get put there on computers that come with everything pre-installed. The same files are usually on an accompanying CD.

One may download drivers and these downloads are usually a compressed file, and when executed, it unpacks to a directory it creates on the c drive. Intel does this as do most graphics device drivers. Some manufacturers use the temp directories.

Where exactly they get unpacked is pre-programmed in the driver installer, or the installer gives you a choice where the files should get extracted. Usually, the driver installer automatically launches the setup.exe program and the driver gets installed. Some such installers will then delete the extracted files after installation completes, some leave them there.

Drivers that have been installed are located in c/windows/system32/drivers folder. These are just the .sys files for hardware that Windows loads. That drivers directory may also contain folders put there by driver installers.

The best way to match the right driver for the device is to get the drivers at the comp manufacturer's Website.

 

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