- Troubleshooting with Device Manager
- Troubleshooting Device Driver Problems
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Troubleshooting Device Driver Problems
Device drivers are small chunks of software that Windows uses to contact and control (that is, “drive”) your PC’s hardware. As the middlemen brokering the dialogue between Windows and our devices, these complex bits of code perform a crucial task. After all, unleashing the full potential of your system is just not possible unless the hardware and the operating system coexist harmoniously and optimally.
Other than problems with the hardware itself, device drivers are the cause of most device woes. This is true even if your device doesn’t have one of the problem icons mentioned in the preceding section. That is, if you open the device’s properties sheet, Windows might tell you that the device is “working properly,” but all that means is that Windows can establish a simple communications channel with the device. So if your device isn’t working right, but Windows says otherwise, suspect a driver problem.
Basic Device Driver Troubleshooting
Here are a few basic techniques for correcting device driver problems:
- Reinstall the driver—A driver might be malfunctioning because one or more of its files have become corrupted. You can usually solve this problem by reinstalling the driver. Just in case a disk fault caused the corruption, you should check the hard drive where the driver is installed (usually drive C) for errors before reinstalling.
→ To learn more about hard disk error checking, see “Dealing with Hard Disk Errors,” p. 17
- Upgrade to a signed driver—Unsigned drivers—that is, device drivers that don’t come with a security signature from Microsoft that verifies the drivers are safe to install—are accidents waiting for a place to happen in Windows, so you should upgrade to a signed driver, if possible. How can you tell whether an installed driver is unsigned? In Device Manager, double-click the device to open its Properties dialog box and then display the Driver tab. Signed driver files display a name (such as “Microsoft Windows”) beside the Digital Signer label (see Figure 5.3), whereas unsigned drivers display “Not digitally signed” instead.
Figure 5.3. In the Driver tab, the Digital Signer label tells you whether the device driver is signed.
- Disable an unsigned driver—If an unsigned driver is causing system instability and you can’t upgrade the driver, try disabling it. In Device Manager, double-click the device to open its Properties dialog box, click the Driver tab, and then click Disable.
- Try the manufacturer’s driver supplied with the device—If the device came with its own driver (say, on a CD or DVD), either try updating the driver to the manufacturer’s (see “Updating a Device Driver,” later in this chapter) or try running the device’s setup program from the disc.
- Download the latest driver from the manufacturer—Device manufacturers often update drivers to fix bugs, add new features, and tweak performance. Go to the manufacturer’s website to see whether an updated driver is available. See “Tips for Downloading Device Drivers,” next, for more info.
- Roll back a driver. If the device stops working properly after you update the driver, try rolling it back to the old driver as described a bit later in the “Rolling Back a Device Driver” section.
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Tips for Downloading Device Drivers
Finding device drivers on the Web is an art in itself. I can’t tell you how much of my life I’ve wasted rooting around manufacturer websites trying to locate a device driver. Most hardware vendor sites seem to be optimized for sales rather than service, so although you can purchase, say, a new printer with just a mouse click or two, downloading a new driver for that printer can take a frustratingly long time. To help you avoid such frustration, here are some tips from our hard-won experience:
- If the manufacturer offers different sites for different locations (such as different countries), always use the company’s “home” site. Most mirror sites aren’t true mirrors, and (Murphy’s law still being in effect) it’s usually the driver you’re looking for that a mirror site is missing.
- The temptation when you first enter a site is to use the search feature to find what you want. This works only sporadically for drivers, and the site search engines almost always return marketing or sales material first.
- Instead of the search engine, look for an area of the site dedicated to driver downloads. The good sites will have links to areas called Downloads or Drivers, but it’s far more common to have to go through a Support or Customer Service area first.
- Don’t try to take any shortcuts to where you think the driver might be hiding. Trudge through each step the site provides. For example, it’s common to have to select an overall driver category, then a device category, then a line category, and then the specific model you have. This is tedious, but it almost always gets you where you want to go.
- If the site is particularly ornery, the preceding method might not lead you to your device. In that case, try the search engine. Note that device drivers seem to be particularly poorly indexed, so you might have to try lots of search text variations. One thing that usually works is searching for the exact filename. How can you possibly know that? A method that often works for me is to use Google (www.google.com), Google Groups (groups.google.com), or some other web search engine to search for the driver. Chances are, someone else has looked for your file and will have the filename (or, if you’re really lucky, a direct link to the driver on the manufacturer’s site).
- When you get to the device’s download page, be careful which file you choose. Make sure it’s designed for your version of Windows, and make sure you’re not downloading a utility program or some other nondriver file.
- When you finally get to download the file, be sure to save it to your computer rather than opening it. If you reformat your system or move the device to another computer, you’ll be glad you have a local copy of the driver so that you don’t have to wrestle with the whole download rigmarole all over again.
Updating a Device Driver
As I mentioned earlier, one of basic troubleshooting techniques for hardware troubles is to update the device’s driver to either the version that comes on a disc that shipped with the device, or a version that you downloaded from the manufacturer’s website. Either way, follow these steps to update a device driver:
- If you have a disc with the updated driver, insert it. If you downloaded the driver from the Internet, decompress the driver file, if necessary (which generally means double-clicking the file).
- Open Device Manager as described earlier in this chapter.
- Click the device you want to work with.
- Select Action, Update Driver Software. (You can also click the Update Driver Software button in the toolbar or double-click the device, display the Driver tab, and click Update Driver.) The Update Driver Software Wizard appears.
You have two choices:
- Search Automatically for Updated Driver Software—Click this option to have Windows check Windows Updates for the driver.
- Browse My Computer for Driver Software—Click this option if you have a local device driver, whether on a disc or in a downloaded file. In the dialog box that appears, click Browse and then select the location of the device driver.
NOTE
If your driver download comes packaged in a setup file, it’s almost always best just to launch the setup file and let it perform the update for you.
Rolling Back a Device Driver
It’s an unfortunate fact of computing life that sometimes the attempts we make at fixing a problem only lead to worse or different problems. Sigh. So if you updated a device driver as described in the previous section but that has only made things worse in some way, not to worry. Windows has tools that let you easily roll back the driver update, which means it reverts to using the previous device driver.
You have two ways to fix things:
- If updating the driver was the last action you performed on the system, restore the system to the most recent restore point.
→ To learn how to restore your system, see “Recovering Using System Restore,” p. 95
- If you’ve updated other things on the system in the meantime, a restore point might cause you to lose updates you want to keep. In that case, you need to roll back just the device driver that’s causing problems.
Follow these steps to roll back a device driver:
- Run Device Manager as described earlier in this chapter.
- Double-click the device to open its Properties dialog box.
- Display the Driver tab.
- Click Roll Back Driver and then click OK.