There are several ways you can go about finding drivers for your pc devices. Listed below are just 7 of them. Sometimes we experience problems with our devices due to driver errors, by knowing where to locate new drivers you should be able to solve most driver based conflicts both quickly and easily.
Where To Locate Drivers:
1: Device Installation Disk – whenever you buy a new piece of hardware the chances are that it will be supplied with a disk containing the appropriate drivers. The disk will contain details such as the version of the driver and will allow you to re-install the drivers or repair previous driver installations that have become broken or faulty.
2: Device Manufacturer’s Website – the majority of manufacturers have their own website where you can download the latest drivers for your specific device.
3: PC Manufacturer’s Website – if you have a branded computer, such as Dell, Lenevo or Acer for example, then the manufacturer’s website can also provide you with the latest drivers. This is a good place to source your drivers because computers made by specific manufacturers may require specialized versions of drivers in order to work correctly. By visiting your PC manufacturer’s website you can ensure that you are installing the correct drivers for your specific system.
4: Search Engine Results Page – search engines are a great resource when looking for drivers. Simply enter the make and model name of your device and the search engine will return a list of sites that allow you to download the driver.
5: Driver Resource Websites – these are sites that maintain large databases containing hundreds of thousands of device drivers. Simply enter the make and model of your hardware device and the site will search its database for the latest driver.
6: Windows Device Manager – the Windows operating system has a built in feature that allows you to check that your drivers are working correctly, and to also update drivers if required. To access this feature:
Click Start button and choose Control Panel
Click System and Maintenance and then choose Device Manager
(You can also right click the My Computer icon on your desktop and choose Properties, then Hardware, then Device Manager.)
Double click the hardware device and choose the Driver tab.
7: Driver Download And Update Programs – these programs make it easy to keep your drivers up to date. Once installed the program will scan your computer identifying all of your hardware devices and drivers. The software then lets you know if any drivers are outdated or broken. With a single click of your mouse you can then update and repair out of date and broken drivers. The software automatically locates the latest driver for each of your devices. This is especially helpful if you want to update several drivers at the same time.
Conclusion
By knowing where to locate the drivers needed by each of your hardware devices you will be able to ensure that your drivers are kept up to date, which in turn will help you to get the very best performance out of your hardware.