How to Update Drivers in Windows 7

Is something going wrong with your hardware or printer. Check Drivers are up to Date and Install New Ones in Windows 7

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 How to check Drivers are up to Date and Installing New Ones in Windows 7


Hardware drivers will help your machine function properly allowing the computer to be able to use the various bits of hardware along with the software programs that you are wanting to use.  For example, without a proper driver, you could plug in a backup USB device, but the computer wouldn't know what to do with the hardware or how to interact with it at all until the driver is installed.  This is why hardware drivers are important.

With Windows 7, you are going to get the very best performance whenever you have the proper drivers as well as the most up to date ones.  Updates to these various drivers are made on a regular basis to help improve the performance of the hardware that you have on the machine and to fix bugs that might be there on the previous versions.

If you don't do anything on your Windows 7 computer, you might not have the new drivers.  This is why you need to check the hardware drivers and install the new ones if they are available.  There are a few methods to do this.

Click on the Start button, hit All Programs, then select Windows Update.  You may have to type in a password to proceed to the next step.  Next you are going to click on Check for updates.  Once this task is complete you are able to click on View available updates.  This will bring up a list of updates and show you any drivers that might have an updated version that needs to be installed.  Simply click on Install and your system will take care of this for you.

If you want to do this process manually, there are a few options.  For more advanced users, you can go into your Control Panel then find your way to the Device Manager.  Here you can click on the specific device that you want to check on.  If you want to update your video driver, you will have to find your video card in this application.  If you double click on the device you want to select, you can then use the Driver tab and update the driver from here.

Some people still prefer to install the drivers the older way of visiting the manufacturers' website and downloading the updates.  This isn't the best way of getting the job done, but it works.  Normally, you can enter in your make and model of computer and be given a list of drivers that are available for your hardware.  Getting the most recent ones is very easy and it's a matter of installing each one.

Most people should be able to use the automatic updates from Windows alone to take care of everything, but the other two methods do have their place as well.