Drivers making You crazy?

Hardware, Signing, Missing , Corrupt, Out of Date ...

Over the years there have been attempts at making them universal that is one for all video cards, one for all NIC, and so on.

Basically this idea will not work because of trademarks, copyrights, and patent rights for each device, which is engineered differently so each one has to be different to accommodate the different interrupts, DMA settings, memory address assignment, and so on.

Every since ATI made the first VGA Video card and device software they have been making me nuts. Then Creative Labs made their sound card and the device software! Sheeeeessshhh.

So what is a user or even a seasoned Tech to do? (I have a new video card and the installation with device software and all the extras comes on a (wait for it!)

DVD!

As a Tech I always made sure that the customer received the device software media and understood the importance of keeping that data in a safe place.

One time I had to go to a Ladies home to fix her computer, it was a forty five mile trip one way. When I got to the point of where I needed the device software disk I asked her for it (I had given it to her about a year before). She gives me the disk, I put it in the floppy drive click the ok... File not found! Oppps... Now what? I check the disk on my laptop, sure enough there were files, not device files but documents!

I asked her what happened to the original files, she says she needed to save her documents and that was the only disks she had at the time so she formatted it and put her documents on it.

True, I did not stress the importance of keeping the disk safe but did stress doing a backup of her data.

I had to go back to the shop, get a disk with the device software, then all the way back and finish the job. ( I got home about 8 PM that day).

Two lessons learned from this:

• Write protect media (CD/DVD's already are).
• Stress the importance of keeping that DATA safe.

Now days if the media is bad, missing, not available you can jump on the internet and download it.

The 5 Steps to high quality and cheap DIY Computer Repairs Get It Today...

I have tried a couple of these web sites/programs.

One web site I used when I took Windows 7 off of my ASUS Laptop and put XP on it. It was the ASUS web site, I downloaded the ASUS update program thinking "This will be a snap, the program will check the hardware then download the appropriate device software."

Sorry, Charlie... It didn't work. It didn't do anything at all. So I had to manually download each device's software, took a good two hours to get them all because the ASUS web site is so poorly designed and the web site is very busy. (Update on the ASUS web site: Finding your software for your device is getting a little better, if you select the model of your computer and then the Operating System chances are you will be sent to the page for your computer, I have had to modify the model number a few times to get to the appropriate page...)

Another time I was looking for a Sound device software for a specific embedded sound device because the owner had lost the media. I downloaded a program like 'Driver Dr' that was supposed to scan the hardware and download the specific device software. That didn't work out too well, the program had a virus from the originating web site. The virus was so bad I had to wipe the hard drive and start all over again. (Believe me that the owner of that computer was not a "Happy Camper" either!)

And then there are the failures that tried to make updating your programs easier:

The 'Driver Signing' scheme by MS was another attempt at getting all the hardware device software to conform to a set of rules, that didn't work out too well either.

Have you tried using the Device Manager and doing a 'Update Driver' and let the program go to the internet to find it? Didn't work out too well did it?

Device hardware and software programs are a real pain in the ..., no?

For me I guess the old fashioned search and download will have to work, don't need any more viruses, data thieves, or brain dead programs eating memory or hard drive space.

What do you do for device software?