...JAIIQ.COM...
...JAIIQ.COM...
by Owen Linderholm
Your PC is chock full of whizzy technology like 3D graphics cards, stereo audio, color printers, and even extra storage devices like Zip drives. And you expect all of these parts to work every day and keep on working. Plus, you know that you can add new hardware like a better sound card or a virtual reality headset any time you like, right? And you expect every application upgrade and slamming new game to work with whatever odd hardware you've added. But life isn't always like that—sometimes your PC drops dead and refuses to play until you get rid of that nasty new thing. Then chances are you have a driver problem. And we're here to help you learn the rules of the road.
This Beginner's Guide will teach you how to steer around the potholes while keeping your PC and all its drivers running smoothly.
A driver is a piece of software that lets your PC talk to peripherals, components, and other hardware. It interprets standard operating system commands to the specific, quirky needs of the underlying hardware. We'll assume that we're talking about Windows 95 here, but the same principles apply to Windows 3.x or any other PC operating system. There are also drivers built into the operating system to control memory, cache, and other basics of your PC, and the system BIOS chip holds drivers for essential components like the keyboard and floppy drive.
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But drivers are themselves pieces of software, so they can be as buggy as anything else. Sometimes the driver just doesn't work very well, and sometimes it doesn't work with some other piece of software. Either way, the usual solution for any hardware conflict or problem is to try an updated driver. If the problem is a common one, chances are that the manufacturer has already rewritten the driver to take care of it. That's why every time you install new hardware or software, whether a graphics card or a new graphics program, if there's a problem everyone will automatically blame the driver. And chances are they'll be right.
The result is that there are often many different versions of a particular driver, and you may need to try several of them to find the one that works. Manufacturers are constantly releasing new drivers and making them available on Web sites and bulletin boards for downloading.
Drivers are critical for keeping your PC running. Whenever you upgrade any hardware, you'll need to know how to find out what drivers are running on your system. Fortunately, you can find all the drivers on your system in two places, and you can usually find out exactly what versions they are. Open up the control panel from Settings on the Start menu: all your printer drivers can be found from the Printer icon, and every other driver can be found from the System icon.
Printers get treated slightly differently; since most people end up printing to one of several different printers, you'll usually find several printer drivers.
Select the desired device, then push the Properties button and another tabbed dialog will appear.
Sometimes solving the problem doesn't require a whole new driver: maybe all you need is to change some settings that don't actually match your hardware or software. It won't be possible to tweak every driver this way, but you should at least take a look before going to the trouble of throwing out your existing driver in favor of a newer model. Here's how to look at the settings of a particular driver:
1. From the Start menu, select Settings, Control Panel.
2. Open the System icon and find the device you are interested in on the list of System Properties.
3. Select the device and click the Properties button. You'll get a tabbed dialog box of all the settings available for the device and its driver.
4. Step through all the tabs and make sure the settings are correct as far as you know. Make any obvious corrections. If there's nothing to change or the changes don't work, then you probably need a new driver.
Even if everything is working correctly, you can sometimes get more performance out of your system by checking the settings. A good example is the settings for a modem. If you have the right kind of modem and PC, you'll have a Port Settings button on the Modem tab of the Modem Properties dialog box. Windows 95 automatically sets the FIFO Receive Buffer Setting slightly lower than its maximum. Try sliding it all the way to the right. You may get slightly better performance. If, instead, you get even more flaky connections than you did before, put it back where it was originally. The point of all this is that you can sometimes solve your problem without changing drivers.
More often than you'd like, you'll find that your problem really does require a new set of drivers. Usually the best solution is to go to the manufacturer's Web site, find the drivers section (usually in tech support), and look for a driver that's been written to solve your problem. Failing that, look for the most recent set of drivers, even if it doesn't promise to solve your problem.
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Once you've found the most up-to-date driver or the specific driver for your problem, download it. Typically there are instructions for installing the driver in a readme or help file accompanying the driver. You'll have to copy the file into a particular folder on your hard drive,or unzip a bunch of files, and then run an install. At best, the manufacturer will have packaged everything into a self-installing package. At worst, you'll have to copy some files onto your hard drive and then follow these steps:
1. Go back to the System Properties dialog box and bring up the Properties dialog box for your particular peripheral.
3. Click on the Change Driver button; another dialog box appears. On this one, you'll need to push the Have Disk button, then the Browse button.
4. Point the installation program toward the file(s) you just stored away.
5. Finally, you'll see the device listed. As you back out through the endless stream of dialog boxes, you'll be asked if you want to restart your system to have the new settings take effect. You should agree, and hopefully when your system restarts, your problems will be solved.
Printers are a little different. The easiest way to install a new driver is to open the Printers icon in the Control Panel folder, then double-click the Add New Printer icon. A wizard pops up to guide you through the process. When you get to the dialog listing all the printer types, just push the Have Disk button instead of picking a printer. Even if your printer is listed, you want to install the new driver you just got rather than the listed one that came with Windows 95. The rest of the installation is smoothly handled by the wizard.
No matter how carefully you proceed, every now and again you and your driver will hit a pothole. Your PC and the software running it are a complex mix of cooperating and interacting entities. Like an interpreter, the driver's job is to help its piece of hardware talk to the rest of the system. But sometimes something gets lost in the translation. Even worse, the functions of different pieces of hardware can overlap and then their drivers can start to interfere with one another. And when this happens, you'll wish that the problem really was as simple as interpreting and mediating between arguing superpowers in the UN. Resolving operating system and driver conflicts requires the detective abilities of Sam Spade, the negotiating skills of a flea market veteran, and unlimited access to technical support.
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Try each possible combination of new drivers and hardware settings. Even though this can take a long time, it is often the easiest way to resolve conflicts. If all else fails, reinstall Windows 95, making sure that you clean out all the old .DLL and system files before reinstalling. This will remove extraneous files that may be causing the conflicts or preventing new software from running correctly. But this is a long process that will require you to reinstall all your nonstandard peripherals and software and restore all your settings. Manufacturers commonly recommend this when providing tech support because it guarantees removing all the oddities they might not know about. However, they don't have to take into account the inconvenience to you, so make sure you've tried all the other roads to resolution first.
If even this doesn't work, you can either give up (a common reaction after two straight weeks of sleepless nights) or try again from the beginning. Surprisingly, this sometimes works even though it seems like you already tried everything. Once you've finally got everything working, if you made it without yelling or cursing at anyone, you're ready for a new job as an international diplomat.
