You won’t always be able to conveniently find an updated driver for a particular piece of hardware. It may be that the manufacturer is no longer in business or that your particular piece of hardware is no longer supported by the manufacturer. In that case, there are some online sites that have drivers available for just about any piece of hardware imaginable. A note of caution: the driver that you find on that site may not be the most recent driver and the driver may not be issued or supported by the manufacturer. Meaning, if it messes up your computer, you probably don’t have any recourse.
To check and see if your driver is more recent that the one you may find on another web site, check the version number:
- Click on “Start” -> “Settings” -> “Control Panel” -> System -> Device Manager tab.
- Find the piece of hardware you are updating the driver for in the Device Manager window.
- Click on the piece of hardware and then click the Properties button.
- Click on the Driver tab and then the Driver File Details… button.
- The version of the driver you have installed is the number following File version:
The version number will usually look something like this: 133.4.1. Newer drivers usually have higher numbers. An update to 133.4.1 might be 133.4.2 or 133.5.1. If the number of the driver you are installing is lower, it’s probably best not to continue with the installation process.
Some great places to find drivers for just about everything are:
PC Drivers Headquarters: http://www.drivershq.com/
WinDrivers: http://www.windrivers.com/
c|net download.com: http://download.cnet.com/downloads/0-10010.html?tag=dir
DriverGuide.com: http://www.driverguide.com/
PCDrivers.com: http://www.pcdrivers.com/
What About My Peripherals?
Don’t forget to update your peripherals’ drivers: scanners, printers, monitors, etc. Again, check the manufacturer’s web site. Simply updating your printer’s driver can often result in remarkable differences in print quality and speed. Once upon a time before I got cable (woohoo!), an update of my computer’s modem allowed me to consistently improve my connection speeds from an average of 36,000 to 50,666 bps! That’s a 41% increase in connection speeds!
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