Fix your drivers : Safely Update All Your Drivers in Minutes

A driver updating tool is a software utility that you can install on your computer to assist you with identifying out of date drivers in your computer. Driver updating tools vary in the number of different features each tool has with some having very advanced features. Such advanced features include the ability to locate the download location of the drivers you require and automatically download and update all your drivers with one click.

There are commercial tools that you need to pay a little license fee for and there are free tools available. Of course the commercial ones usually come with more advanced features and hence they are the best tools to use. The cost is negligible compared to the convenience of using such a tool and the time it saves you not to mention the headaches associated with finding the right drivers.

It is hard to say for sure which is the best driver updating tool available however you may see a review of some of these tools on the page: http://www.fixyourdrivers.com/review.html . My experience with these tools has been a good one and hence any of these tools come highly recommended and I would not hesitate to pay for any to enjoy the convenience. I certainly hope that these tools will help you as you seek to keep your computer drivers up to date and in good working order. I also welcome your comments and questions on the use of any of these driver updating tools reviewed in this website.

Driver detective is an example of a driver updating software

admin Uncategorized driver updating software reviews, driver updating tools, fix drivers, free driver updates, update drivers

In my previous posts, I have been dwelling much on Microsoft Windows drivers and although I had written something on Linux drivers in a previous article, I have not given Mac drivers much attention. With the recent developments in Macs, I felt it’s important for me to talk a little about Mac drivers if there are any.

Mac OS X ranges of operating systems are based on the Mach kernel platform and include the versions: 10.0 – cheetah, 10.1 – puma, 10.2 – jaguar, 10.3 – panther, 10.4 – tiger and 10.5 – leopard. The latest version is the 10.5 – leopard that was released in October 26, 2007. Mac OS X range of OS’s are generally built to with Macintosh products thus cannot work with processors made by other companies.

Currently after Microsoft Windows operating system, Mac OS X is ranked second in terms of general purpose functionality. Mac OS X range of operating systems’ are not backward compatible and unlike windows are rarely attacked by bugs because the OS’s are frequently updated. To curb the bug - attack problem antivirus programs for Macs are available in the market.

Though it is not an open source operating system like Linux, it has open source components and is the most successful UNIX-like operating system released, reaching a penetration of more than ten times that of Linux.

Since Mac OS X supported only the full line of Macintosh components, other hardware manufacturers did not dwell on making hardware compatible with the Mac OS X thus issues such as device driver problems were scarce. However, third parties have developed tools such as XPostFacto and patches applied to the installation discs that enable newer versions of Mac OS X to be installed on systems not officially supported by Apple. This has caused an increase in the number of device driver problems.

Other tools have also been developed by the company itself such as Boot Camp, which contains Mac-specific Windows drivers, and helps install Windows XP and Windows Vista and also enables dual boot of the operating systems. Boot Camp does not however contain all the necessary drivers required for all the Mac hardware to be compatible with Windows. More of the drivers can be downloaded from the Apple website.

With the talk of a new Mac OS X (10.6 – Snow Leopard) set to hit the market in September 2009 together with the Apple transition from PowerPC to Intel, most of the current PowerPC compatible software are predicted to become obsolete. Apple however, decided to let Rosetta (a layer which enables software compiled for PowerPC) to be installed additionally onto the Snow Leopard so as to allow such software to be compatible.

Given the fact that Apple stated that Mac OS X would not run on Intel-based personal computers aside from its own, a hacked version of the OS compatible with conventional x86 hardware was developed by the OSx86 community. This prompted Apple to announce on June 8 2009, at its Worldwide Developers Conference that Snow Leopard (version 10.6) would drop support for PowerPC processors and be Intel-only. Whether Rosetta is still supported is unclear.

I guess Mac driver issues will become more frequent in the future in line with these recent developments and hence users will need to be more aware of the need to update their drivers frequently.

admin Uncategorized driver problems, Linux drivers, mac drivers, update drivers, windows drivers

You’ve got your computer speakers connected and turned on, you open your media player and then you get an error: No audio device installed, and you can’t help but wonder, what do you mean by this? Well, this is also a driver related problem.

Sound systems usually consist of a sound card connected to the pc’s motherboard and it is on the sound card that you insert the output jack for the speakers. Then there is the speakers or headphones to output the sound and lastly a device driver for your sound card. This is a common problem mainly because most people assume that with the sound card and the speakers you should be able to play sound on your computer. It is very easy to forget that you also require drivers because drivers are not physical devices that you can see with your naked eye.

When dealing with a driver related problem, it is always important to remember that all operating systems and even application software have platforms that support specific hardware components and thus require their drivers as well. It is therefore paramount for you as the user to consult the specifications of your sound card to confirm whether it is compatible with your pc or not. It is easy to tell whether your problem is a driver related issue by going to the device manager tool. Once in the device manager, double-click sound, video and game controllers and from there you will be able to see the devices that are not properly installed and this should give you an option to update your drivers. If you have a CD with the drivers you can use it to update the drivers or you may as well use a driver updating tool such as the one found at http://www.fixyourdrivers.com

In case you are sure that your problem is not driver related and you are still unable to hear any sound from your speakers, you may need to look at other possible causes that could also be related to your hardware or your operating system. A good starting point is checking if all the data cable connectors from your speakers to your pc are properly plugged or if they are working. You may also need to check if all the power cables from your speakers to power source are in order. Also make sure that your speakers are turned on.

You may also need to look at the volume controls in the control panel and ensure that the mute check box is not checked. You may also try increasing the volume because it could be a case of the volume being too low and therefore you are not able to hear anything. Also make sure that whatever media you are trying to play has sound in it because you could be playing soundless animations or video and hence no sound will be output.

If the sound has been playing and then all over sudden it stops playing then it could be a case of hardware failure which could be as a result of physical damage to the hardware (mainly through abrupt power losses, physical impact on the hardware components) or poor maintenance of the hardware components (e.g. exposure to dust, liquids, direct sunlight and even magnetic materials). It is therefore vital to perform frequent maintenance checks on your hardware to enable it perform to its optimum and also have a longer life span.

Operating system problems include poor configuration of the device in the CMOS/BIOS setup where the device might have been disabled without your knowledge or the device is not supported by your operating system. For hardware and operating system related issues, I would recommend that you seek the assistance of a qualified engineer or return your computer to the vendor for remedial action.

admin Uncategorized audio device, device drivers, driver configuration, driver errors, hardware failure, no audio device installed, update drivers

Linux is an open source operating system that is quickly gaining popularity day by day mainly because it is free. Commonly used in servers, Linux is now also been used to run laptops, desktops, mobile devices e.t.c. Linux by itself is a generic name referring to operating systems that are Unix like and are based on the Linux kernel. These operating systems are distributed under different names such as Ubuntu and Netbooks. A Linux based system is developed using the development principles established by Unix in the earlier years and the underlying concept of modularity.

Linux operating systems come with a number of applications such as the Mozilla Firefox web browser and the OpenOffice.org office application suite. Recent developments allow users to use Microsoft Windows based applications on Linux and hence with a Linux operating system one can be able to use Microsoft Office applications. Linux is also very compatible with many other software applications from different software vendors. So in essence Linux is very similar to other operating systems in terms of functionality and the only difference is that it is free.

So the question then is what about drivers when running on Linux? Even when running on Linux, you still need to have the right drivers installed on your computer. Most hardware device manufacturers know that Linux is fast gaining popularity and hence as they manufacture their devices, they are providing Linux users with the necessary device drivers. It is possible to then find Linux drivers in the websites of the hardware manufacturers and for those manufacturers that do not have the drivers on their websites; you may find useful information pointing you to where you can download the drivers.

Another source of Linux drivers in the Linux drivers’ website, this is a website that lists all Linux compatible devices and the drivers’ download location. This is a very useful resource for most Linux users because it has a search facility and within one or two clicks it is easy for one to tell if your device is compatible or not. The website is updated on a daily basis and this makes it the best place for someone to find Linux drivers. The website is maintained by a Linux user with the support of the Linux developer community. As with Linux itself, Linux drivers can be downloaded from the website for free.

Linux operating system also comes with some device drivers installed in it and it is easy to tell whether your device is supported or not. To find out if your device is supported, you need to go to the Linux kernel help files, from the kernel help files you would be able to search and know if your device is supported or not. If you find that your device is not supported, then you may need to look for the right drivers for your device and install them yourself. So Linux like any other Operating System requires to have device drivers installed and it is good to know that Linux drivers are also readily available.

admin Uncategorized device drivers, driver downloads, Linux drivers, search drivers, unix drivers, windows drivers

This is a very common question in many tech forums and there is no one answer to this problem because your printer may print garbage for a number of reasons as we will see below, however it always has something to do with the computer not communicating properly with the printer and hence the printer ends up printing what the user had not intended.

One of the main causes of this problem is drivers. If you have the wrong drivers installed in your computer, the computer will not be able to communicate with the printer in a language it can understand. Imaging having a person speak to you in a language that you do not know and then asks you to write down what he or she has said to you, you can be certain that what you will write down will not even make sense to the person talking to you. Having the right drivers for your printer helps the computer communicate with the printer in its native language and hence the printer is able to print correctly.

There are some people who install generic printer drivers on their computers, what generic drivers do is; they allow users to print from the computer using any kind of printer. Unfortunately they are limited to a few font types and font sizes and this limits the printer’s functionality. This means that even though the printer can perform many other advanced functions, without the right drivers one can only print basic layouts that are supported by the generic drivers. You may therefore find that even though the printer is printing something that you can read, you notice that the fonts have been changed and the graphics have not been printed properly. To get the best performance out of your printer, it is important that you update all your printer drivers with the right drivers.

Besides drivers, a faulty printer data cable may cause the printer to print junk. In this case what happens is that the message that is communicated by the computer to the printer for printing is not delivered as it was sent. Either some parts of the message are lost on the way or the message does not arrive in the order in which it was sent. This is not only a common cause of printer printing problem but also one that is very easy to fix because all one needs to do is to replace the cable with one that is functioning well.

Another thing that may cause the printer to print garbage is when the output you want printed gets sent to the wrong printer other than the one you wanted the output sent to. This is a common problem in networked environments where there is a print server that processes the print jobs. In this case the print server may send a print job to the wrong printer and this amounts to sending a message to the wrong recipient and one who does not understand the language. If you find yourself in this situation, the best thing to do is to switch off the printer, and then on your computer, go into printer settings and delete/cancel all the pending print jobs. This will definitely clear the print queue and once it is cleared, you may then send the print job again to the right printer.

Other causes of the printer printing garbage may include power failure during printing and once power comes back the printer may print garbage mostly because the print message may have become corrupt due to the power failure and in such a case restarting both the computer and the printer may cure the problem. So you do not have to keep searching for the answer to this question, the tips outlined above will help you diagnose the cause of the problem and take the right steps to solve it.

admin Uncategorized driver related errors, epson printer drivers, fix drivers, hp printer drivers, printer drivers, printer errors, printer printing garbage, printer solution, update drivers

You have probably come across that “USB Device Not Recognized Error” when using your computer, and maybe you landed on this page as you were looking for a solution to that error. The device not recognized error is one of the most common driver related errors and it is a frequently asked question in many technical forums. It is also one of the easiest problems to solve although many people struggle to find the solution to it. On this post, I will give you practical advice that you can follow as you attempt to solve this problem.

USB device not recognized error may occur when you resume your computer from standby or hibernation if USB/PS2 combination devices are attached to the computer and an example of such a device is a keyboard that has both USB and PS2 connectors. This happens if during initialization, devices are reset too soon after they are powered on and in this situation, some devices may use the wrong connector. This is a common problem for Windows XP home and professional users. To resolve this problem all one needs to do is to obtain the latest service pack for Windows XP.

The USB device not recognized error may also occur after you have installed a new device in your computer. The device may also install other ports and other software in your computer that may cause a conflict with existing USB ports. If you notice this error after installing a new device or software, it is recommended that you roll back to your earlier systems settings using Windows restore. If you know exactly what you installed that may be causing problems you may also manually uninstall it using the Add/Remove programs link on your Control Panel. This will eliminate the error and get your computer working well again.

Some people have also seen the error occur when they insert a USB device that has always worked then all over sudden it stops working and gives this error message. This is usually a case of corrupted drivers. Drivers may become corrupt when you insert a device similar to yours on the USB port and since most of these USB devices install themselves automatically, the new device may install itself and update the USB drivers on your computer. This means that the drivers that you will have will definitely not work with your earlier device because they have been updated. It is also possible that the installation of the new device may not run smoothly and this also ends up corrupting the existing drivers. In this case you will need to install the correct drivers for your device all over again. You can use a software driver updating tool to help you automatically update all your drivers instantly.

There may also be some hidden devices in your computer that may be causing conflicts with your USB device and these may need to be removed to correct the error. To do this you simply need to follow the following steps:

1.  Click Start. Click Run. Type cmd and press OK.
2. Type “set DEVMGR_SHOW_DETAILS=1″ (without quotation marks) and press Enter.
3. Type “set DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1″ (without quotation marks) and Press Enter.
4. Type “start devmgmt.msc” (without quotation marks) and click press Enter.
5. Click View. Click Show hidden devices.
6. Click “+” to expand Imaging devices, Unknown devices and USB devices.
7. Are there any USB devices and unknown devices (including grayed out devices)? If so, please right click it and click Uninstall.

Those are the main causes of the USB device not recognized error and if you can follow the tips mentioned above, you can be able to easily eliminate this error from your computer.

admin Uncategorized driver problems, driver updates, pc maintenance, USB Device Not Recognized, Windows XP

What is a device driver?

A device driver is a software program that allows other programs within the computer to communicate with a hardware device. This means that every hardware device in the computer requires a driver for it to function properly and for it to obey all the instructions given to it by the software programs that reside in the computer.

 Some common types of device drivers include:

 Printer drivers

A printer driver or a print processor is a piece of software that converts the data to be printed to the form specific to a printer. The purpose of printer drivers is to allow applications to do printing without being aware of the technical details of each printer model.

 Video Adapters drivers

Video adapters are also known as a graphics card, video card, video board, or a video controller. A video adapter is an internal card that allows a display device such as a monitor to display images from the computer. Video adapter drivers make it possible for monitors and other display devices to be able to correctly display output from a computer.

Network Card drivers

A network card is a hardware component that provides communications between a PC and a network connection, typically to a local area network (LAN) or an Internet Service Provider (ISP). Network card drivers ensure that a network card is able to communicate properly with the computer and hence make interconnection between computers possible.

 Storage devices drivers

Storage devices in a computer include hard disks, CDROM, floppy disks and USB mass storage devices. For these storage devices to work well and communicate well with computers storage device drivers are required to ensure that the computer is able to read from and write to the hardware device.

 Sound Card Drivers

A sound card also known as an audio card is a hardware interface that is either built into a computer’s motherboard or inserted into one of the computer’s internal expansion slots. Sound cards allow the computer to play digital audio and/or musical instrument sounds. Many sound cards also provide a MIDI Interface. Sound card drivers make it possible for the sound card to function properly and make it possible for the computer to produce sound e.g. play music.

 Input and output device drivers

Input and Output devices are used to communicate with a computer and they are the devices we use to give instructions to the computer or input data into the computer, examples include mice, keyboards, scanners, digital cameras e.t.c. For these devices to work well with the computer their respective device drivers must be properly installed and running on the computer.

 Who makes the device drivers?

 Device drivers are usually written by software engineers who come from the companies that develop the hardware. This is because they have better information than most outsiders about the design of their hardware. There are also some generic drivers which are usually written by Operating Systems manufacturers and these drivers can be used when the actual device drivers are not available, unfortunately generic drivers are limited in function and if installed may cause some devices not to function properly.

 It is always important that you have the right drivers installed on your computer to ensure that all the devices in your computer are functioning well and you do not get driver related errors when working with your computer.

admin Uncategorized audio drivers, device drivers, network card drivers, printer drivers, sound drivers, usb drivers, video drivers

If you are one of those people who upgraded to Windows Vista from an earlier version of windows, you may have encountered a number of problems with your new operating system. This should not have come to you as a surprise because every time you change your operating system, you are also required to update the device drivers for compatibility with the new operating system. As is the case with any new software in the market, Windows Vista had a number of problems and was not very stable at first. This meant that every user needed to keep up with the frequent Vista release updates that were done to solve the problems. It also became important to update some device drivers every time Microsoft released an update of Vista. This is what became such a problem to many users who ended up complaining too much about Windows Vista performance.

Some of the challenges people encountered when upgrading to Vista was finding that there were no available drivers for their device that were compatible with the new operating system. This was mostly the case for those who had old hardware that was no longer supported by the manufacturer or the manufacturer had already stopped operation. If you encountered such a problem, you had to choose between upgrading to Vista and thus be forced to replace your device with a new one or keeping your device and forgetting about the upgrade.

There was also the problem of delays in driver releases from manufacturers, this meant that some users had to stop using their devices and had to wait until the new drivers were released. This also required users to keep close contact with the device manufacturers so that once the new drivers were available; they would be informed about the release. This not only demonstrated the importance of registering your device with the manufacturer but also the importance of choosing a device from a manufacturer who maintains good customer support for their products.

From the upgrading to Vista experience, we can learn that solving Vista driver problems was not something that could have been left to Microsoft alone but it was important for the users and the device manufacturers also to play a proactive role in ensuring that their devices were working well with the new operating system. Users should therefore make sure that their devices are registered with the manufacturers and for the manufacturers by making sure they have the drivers ready by the time the new software releases are made.

While Windows Vista may still have a few bugs here and there, the lessons learnt have helped both Microsoft and device manufacturers see the importance of better coordination when doing new version releases and I hope that we will not see similar problems with the next version of Windows to hit the market. I hope that by the time the next version of Windows will be with us there will be ready drivers for download on the internet and with the use of driver updating tools, within a couple of clicks computer users will be able to update all their drivers in an easy and convenient way. At the end of the day it is the end user who will benefit from the lessons learnt.

admin Uncategorized driver downloads, driver releases, driver updates, vista drivers, windows drivers, Windows Vista

In my previous article, I wrote about the causes of driver problems and stressed on the importance of keeping your drivers up to date to avoid running into driver related problems. But keeping the drivers up to date is not always an easy thing because even finding the right drivers for your device can also be a daunting task. This is especially so if you may have misplaced the drivers CD that came with your device or you are unable to find the device manufacturers website.

A quick search on the internet for drivers for your device will most likely produce millions of results and this can also be very confusing. This is mainly so because most of these websites claim to have the original drivers for download and this presents a major challenge because how do you decide which website to download from. Even after selecting the website you wish to download from, you may find that there are several versions of that driver in the website and hence you still need to decide which driver to download.

However you may save yourself all this trouble of finding the right driver for device by using one of the automated driver finding softwares in the market. A good example of such a software is driver detective which you can download from the site www.fixyourdrivers.com. Such a software program is specifically designed to help you keep your drivers up to date without much effort. Within a couple of clicks the software scans through your computer looking for out of date drivers and it automatically recommends any updates that maybe available.

For someone who is not very technology savvy, this kind of software takes away the headache of finding the right device drivers and updating them. While the software may cost you a few dollars as licensing fees, it also takes the hustle out of the process of finding the right drivers and the time spent fixing driver related errors. And this is not just for those who are not very knowledgeable in computing matters, actually research shows that quite a good number of IT professionals use this kind of software to keep their drivers up to date.

You can imagine an IT professional who is responsible for maintaining a company’s computing infrastructure say with more than 50 computers and needs to ensure that all these computers are running well and have with up to date drivers. Without such an automated software tool it becomes a very demanding task even if he or she knows where to find the right drivers. The software therefore comes in handy for those who need to make driver updates easier.

Given the benefits of using an automated driver updating software tool such as the one mentioned above, finding the right drivers for your hardware devices can never be any easier than this. As I recommend such a tool, it is good to note that I write from experience having tested and used such tools in the past and having seen how efficient and effective such tools are in keeping drivers up to date.

admin Uncategorized driver downloads, driver problems, driver updating software, epson drivers, finding drivers, fix driver problems, free driver download, Hp Drivers, usb device not recongnized

Hardware devices in your computer will not function properly if the right driver software is not installed. Many people tend to assume that all the drivers required by the hardware devices in a computer comes installed with the computer, but that is not always the case. Almost all new computers usually come with a drivers CD that you are required to run after installing the operating system (OS). This is because the drivers that you install on your computer are dependent on the operating system that runs your computer. A good number of driver problems come from users installing drivers meant to run on a particular operating system being installed in computer that has a different operating system e.g. when you install drivers meant for a Windows XP operating system on a Linux system you should definitely expect to run into problems.

A good number of users also run into driver problems after formatting their computer’s hard drive and installing the operating system afresh. At this point they realise that they may have misplaced the drivers CD or do not remember that the drivers CD is required to complete the installation of the hardware devices. At this point the operating system may fail to recognize the hardware devices and hence that “device not recognized” error or the operating system may choose to use a generic driver for that device. Should a generic driver be used for the device, the device may function in some way but the hardware will not function optimally and errors may keep popping up from time to time.

On the other hand, a computer owner may decide to upgrade the operating system to a newer release in the market. In this case it is also required that the device drivers are upgraded to drivers compatible with that operating system. It is possible that at the time of release of the new operating system, there maybe no compatible drivers or the drivers available are not well tested with the new OS and hence may have bugs that can cause errors in the computer. It is also possible that the device manufacturers may decide not to release drivers that support the new operating system especially if they do not want to continue producing and supporting the version of the device that you have installed.

It has also been reported that bugs in operating systems may cause driver errors. Although device manufacturers are required to write their drivers per the specifications given by operating systems companies, even after following such specifications, you may find that their drivers may still have problems working with an operating system. In such a case the problem may be with the operating system.

As you have seen, driver problems can be caused by a number of reasons but driver problems are also easy to cure. In this era of the World Wide Web, it is a common practice for device manufacturers to make available drivers of all the devices they manufacture on their website for download. The device manufacturers also update the device drivers from time to time to correct any known bugs in their drivers that maybe causing conflicts with operating systems and hence it is easy to find yourself with out of date drivers.

It is therefore important for every computer owner to check from time to time for any driver updates and ensure that you have the right drivers for your hardware. This will ensure that as a user, your computer will continue functioning well without errors and thus be able to maintain a healthy computer that will serve you well without any hitches.

admin Uncategorized 2.0 usb drive, dell drivers, device driver, device not recognised, driver problems, driver windows, epson drivers, Free driver downloads, hp c3180, Hp Drivers, radeon drivers, toshiba drivers, vista drivers