How To Update And Remove PC Drivers
Updating your drivers and software sometimes can significantly improve the speed of your PC and software, as well as fixing old bugs or adding new functionality. Unfortunately, many manufacturers don’t build into their applications an auto-update process, so the only way to do this is manually.
I get around this by keeping a bookmarks folder on my PC where I store links to the sites for all my software and hardware. Then every month or so, I spend 30 mins upgrading all my software and drivers. This is a good habit to get into to keep your machine running smoothly and to stop problems happening further on down the line.
Remving old drivers properly is just as important. Sometimes hwhen you uninstall a device, the drivers may still be using valuable system resources. To ensure you don’t have any old drivers installed do the following:
- Press [Windows]+[Break] to bring up the System Properties dialog box
- Select the ‘Advanced tab’ and click ‘Environment Variables’
- Click the ‘New’ button
- In the New System Variable dialog box, type ‘devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices’ in the Variable Name text box and ‘ 1′ in the Variable Value text box.
- Click ‘OK’ twice
- Select the Hardware tab and click the Device Manager button
- In Device Manager, go to View | Show Hidden Devices
- Expand the various branches in the device tree and look for the washed out icons, which indicate unused device drivers
- To remove an unused device driver, right-click the icon and select Uninstall
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Comment by Mosey on 25 March 2007:
I’ve always been of the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ camp… but I guess if it means improved functionality and new features…
Comment by EvertonBlair on 25 March 2007:
I’m with Tony on this one as you never know what new Goodies might be added!
Comment by Mosey on 25 March 2007:
Thanks
I finally got round to updating the driver for my wireless card and I think it might have improved the connection! (it kept disconnecting) … I had been searching for drivers online but it turns out that Windows update system had one ‘on file’…
Comment by baha on 25 March 2007:
Hi, I have never updated the drivers on my pc its an old dell p3 running xp pro. I wanted to know the proper way of going about updating my drivers for it and what all should be updated. Do you guys have any suggestions on how I should go about doing it.
Comment by Mosey on 25 March 2007:
Baha: I don’t usually update drivers either (unless I’m forced to by a non-working version) for the reason I mentioned earlier. It was pretty straight forward though in my case - ie. the newbie route.
After finding the Device Manager, I went through the list available (starting with my wireless card) and double clicked each device. A pop up window appeared and I clicked on the ‘Drivers’ tab, which displays info about the driver - e.g. version number and date of release. There is a button that allows you to ‘update driver’ and clicking on it will allow connection to Windows. A little while later I either received a message saying it couldn’t find anything better, or (as in the case for mywireless card) it automatically installed (I chose this option earlier) and updated the driver.
Comment by baha on 25 March 2007:
Thanks for the tip/help Mosey!
Pingback by How To: Add, Update And Remove PC Drivers » D’ Technology Weblog — Technology, Blogging, Gadgets, Fashion, Life Style. on 28 March 2007:
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