Device drivers are required for each piece of hardware in your computer. They are specific to the device type and to the operating system you are running. With each product hardware manufacturer’s release, they provide device drivers for the most common operating systems, typically the latest Windows versions. If you run a Linux version, you often need to look for a proper driver yourself.

Since device drivers are software, their development always runs a little behind on the hardware development. As a result, hardware manufacturers will often release a product with early development device drivers. This means that the product will work, but most of the time better device drivers are released later on. Better can mean that bugs have been resolved, extra features of the product are supported and it can also mean better performance.

As a result it is important to update your device drivers when possible. Check for driver updates for your operating system on a regular basis. If you know the brand and model number, you can download most drivers directly from the hardware manufacturer’s website. In Windows you can also select the update driver function for each device in the device manager. Windows will automatically check if there is a new version for your device driver.

When updating your device drivers there are a few things to keep in mind:

• Always keep a copy of the current or previous version of your drivers. If the update fails, you need to be able to restore the driver for the device to operate again. The new Windows operating systems automatically keep the previous version of the driver, so you can roll back to the previous driver.
• Check for the release information of the new driver, it describes the improvements made from the previous version. This can help you decide if a driver update is required. You can skip a version if no improvements were made.
• Look on the internet for reviews or feedback about the new driver. The internet is a valuable medium for user information. If problems have been reported with the new device driver version, you want to wait for another release.

Apart from the manual driver updates and the automatic updates in Windows, you can also use a 3rd party program to check for driver updates. There are a number of solutions where databases of all types of hardware, and their drivers, are kept up to date. This way these driver update programs (or services) can update all your device drivers for you, not limited to one device at a time.