What are drivers and why are they needed?
The driver is a kind of bridge between the system and the computer hardware. With its help, the Operating System is told everything that is connected to the computer and how to interact with it.
A driver is not a physical device; you cannot “touch” it. This is a program containing files with which the system can interact with devices.
When you are alone, the OS knows nothing about external devices computer, so it needs to be “introduced” to them through drivers.
Some Windows versions already has in itself installed drivers. Usually this is the minimum - for working with sound, video, network, bluetooth, etc.
It cannot be said that without drivers and immediately after installing the OS you will not be able to work with your computer. You will have sound and video, but this standard settings and you will not be able to fully take advantage of all the “delights” of connected devices until you install their drivers.
This applies not only to the new OS on the computer; drivers must also be installed for other new devices that you will connect in the future.
Drivers are needed for almost all equipment that is or will be connected to the computer: sound card, mice and keyboards with additional keys, various joysticks, etc.
For example, if you have not installed drivers for your sophisticated sound card, You may not be able to fully enjoy the sound from the speakers. Or, without installed drivers for the video card, you will have problems with graphics. Well, without drivers for printers, copiers, scanners, web cameras, etc., they will not work and the system will not see them, even though they will be connected.
Yes, you may see in the lower right corner that the system has found, for example, a printer, but when you try to print something, nothing will work.

Where are the drivers located and located in windows?
You can find the driver in (system_drive_letter):\WINDOWS\SYSTM32\. They often don't have just one file. They are scattered throughout this folder and have extensions: *.sys, *.dll, *.vxt, *.drv and *.inf (containing installation information).

How can I find out which drivers are installed?
Go to Device Manager. Right-click on My Computer and select Properties. Next we look for him there.

Or you can use the program.

How to install the driver?
Usually, complete with a device or computer, there are always disks on which there are installation drivers . In this case, you just need to run the disc and follow the instructions.
If automatic installation has not started, then you need to Open the disk through My computer, find and run the setup.exe file there.
If there are no disks, then you need to search on the Internet, for example on such well-known sites as and.
When you connect a new device, a yellow question mark will appear next to it in Device Manager. In this case, right-click on this line and specify the path to the disk or file with the drivers.

How to roll back and remove a driver.
In Device Manager, right-click on the desired line and select Properties. The following is indicated on the screenshot:

The problem of finding and installing drivers has existed since the release of Windows. For example, in Windows XP this problem was most acute, since there were no universal drivers at that time, and immediately after installing Windws XP, a whole list of devices appeared in the device manager for which drivers were not found. In Windows 7, 8, 8.1, this problem has become less acute, since these operating systems have universal drivers, which often fit almost every computer/laptop. But we must admit that when using such drivers, some of the functionality either did not work correctly or did not work at all, for example, the maximum screen resolution was not used or the video camera showed the picture upside down. Therefore the problem searching and installing drivers still remains the first problem after installing the operating system. In order to help solve this problem, this article was written.

First of all, I want to warn you that all the methods described below are as safe as possible and, if performed correctly, will not harm the computer, but nevertheless, I recommend make a restore point so that in case of problems you can return to original state .

So, after installing the operating system, you have unidentified devices in device manager .

Find the driver disk.

Quite often, discs are lost, thrown away, and sometimes are not included at all, so this method is not suitable for everyone, in which case read the methods below.

Download drivers from the official website.

If you cannot find drivers for your laptop, just go to the official website of the laptop manufacturer, find your laptop model (enter your laptop model in the search bar), select operating system, which you installed and download all available drivers.

List of laptop manufacturers' websites:
Acer - www.acer.ru.
ASUS - www.asus.com
HP - www.hp.com/ru
Dell - www.dell.ru
MSI - www.msi.com
Samsung - www.samsung.ru
Toshiba - www.toshiba.com.ru
Sony - www.sony.ru
Lenovo - www.lenovo.com
eMachines - en.emachines.com
LG - www.lg.com
Gigabyte - www.gigabyte.ru

Below is an example of searching for drivers for an ASUS laptop.

If you have a computer, then look at the markings of each of the computer components (motherboard, video card, network card, etc.) to do this, it is not at all necessary to disassemble it. Then go to the component manufacturer's website and download drivers for your version of the operating system.

Search for drivers by hardware ID.

Another way find and download drivers use the site http://devid.info/ru. This site contains information about a large number of hardware IDs and drivers for them. All you have to do is look at the ID of the unknown device and use a search to find it on the website and download it.

To view the device ID, go to Device Manager, right-click on the unknown device, select "Properties"

In the properties window, go to the "Details" tab and in the "Property" field, select "Equipment ID" in the Values ​​field you will see the coveted set of characters. Perhaps the data will not be in two lines, in which case check each of the lines by copying it to search bar Online.

Copy this set of characters and paste it into the search bar on the website http://devid.info/ru.

After the drivers are found, all you have to do is download them, be careful because there are quite a lot of advertisements on this site.

In my case, the drivers were for Windows XP x64, although I needed them for Windows 7 x64, nevertheless I downloaded those that were offered. It turned out that the archive contained drivers for other versions of operating systems, so download the most suitable one from the offer, it is quite possible that what you need will be there.

Installing drivers using programs.

There are a lot of programs to help you find, download and install drivers, the only thing is that these programs are by and large paid. In this example, I will consider one of the free programs - DriverPack Solution. this program is available in two versions, the first version ( online) - is installed on a computer/laptop that has problems with drivers (it is necessary that the network card works and has access to the Internet), scans your computer/laptop and displays a list of drivers that need to be installed, then clicking the “Install and Update” button the program will install all the necessary drivers.

Second version ( full version ) is suitable if the computer/laptop that has problems with drivers does not have access to the Internet or the drivers for the network card are not installed. After downloading the program, run the DriverPackSolution.exe file, the program will scan your computer/laptop and show you all the devices that require installation and updating, to see which devices will have the installed drivers, check the “Settings” and “Expert Mode” boxes. After this, indicate which drivers you want to install (updating drivers is not necessary if you do not experience problems with the operation of these devices).

After this, the drivers will be installed.

In conclusion, I would like to add that you should not download drivers from suspicious sources, sites that require money from you, a phone number, sending SMS, etc. you risk being scammed or downloading a virus.

If you assembled your computer yourself, buying components for it separately, then in this case all the drivers for the computer can no longer be found on one single manufacturer’s website, as it would be easy to do when buying a ready-made computer (this is described in the article “How to find drivers if you purchased a laptop or a ready-made desktop computer!"). After all, you were not buying a ready-made computer, which would belong to some manufacturer, would have its own model and drivers for which you could download all at once from one site. Once the computer is assembled from the spare parts you independently selected, it means that it will no longer correspond to any model and belong to any manufacturer, because it is already your creation :) Therefore, you will have to look for drivers separately for all the devices from which the computer was assembled. This also includes the case when, after purchasing a ready-made (already assembled) computer, after some time you decided to replace some hardware.

Now I will show you how to find all the necessary drivers for a self-configured computer manually via the Internet.

What drivers are is described in the article:

So, you yourself selected all the components, assembled the computer, installed Windows and see that the drivers are not installed for all devices, and maybe not even installed for almost any. You can find out whether all drivers are installed from the standard “Device Manager” utility. I described how to do this in a separate article.

And to install drivers in this case there are several options.

Note!
If you have not even automatically installed drivers for network cards, which does not give you the opportunity to access the Internet from this computer, then all the actions discussed below will have to be performed from some other computer with Internet access. And after you download all the drivers, you will need to transfer them to the right computer, for example, via a flash drive or disk.

Option #1. Search for drivers manually using device codes via the website devid.drp.su

I think this option is the most optimal. The method involves determining the device code and searching for drivers on the Internet using this code on various sites.

Let's assume that in Device Manager we see something like this:

Those. Drivers for several devices are not installed on the computer. However, it is problematic to determine through the device manager for which devices there are no drivers, because the names are somehow blurry. You can only roughly understand. For example, an “Ethernet controller” is most likely a network card for connecting wired Internet. "Network Controller" is probably Wi-Fi adapter, i.e. network card for accessing the Internet via Wi-Fi.

But each device has its own unique number, which the device manager can show us. And once we know the number, we can find a driver for the device via the Internet.

Let's look at a couple of examples of how to find drivers manually using device codes:

First, I will find the driver for the obscure device “Simple Communications PCI Controller”.

We determine the device code for which we want to find a driver.

To determine the device code, right-click on it in the device manager and select “Properties” from the menu that appears:

In the window that opens, select the “Information” tab, and then below, under the “Properties” label, select “Hardware ID”:

First of all, we try to search by the code from the lowest (4th) line. Right-click below on the 4th line with the code and select “Copy”.

We are trying to find the driver by code on the website devid.drp.su.

After copying the code, open the site:

David.drp.su

Let's try to find a driver for it. This site refers to the DriverPack Solution program, which collects almost all possible drivers. Here, with a high degree of probability, you can find a driver for any device.

Having opened the site, the first thing you need to do is paste the device code copied in the previous step into the very top long line and delete in this code everything that comes from the “&” symbol to the end.

For example, you copied the code:
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_0166 &CC_0300

This means that after removing the characters from “&” you should be left with the code:
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_0166

If you don't know what system you have, open Windows search and enter “System Information” there, then select the program that appears from the list:

In the program that opens, in the window on the left, select “System Information” and on the right in the “OS Name” line the version of your Windows will be displayed (in my example in the image below “Windows 10”), and in the “Type” line - bitness: x64 or x86:

Based on this data, we indicate the type and bit capacity of the system on the website devid.drp.su.

After the device code is specified and the Windows version is selected, click the “Search Drivers” button.

As a result, a list of drivers that are suitable for the hardware code you specified and for your version of Windows will appear on the page. Using the “Download” button, download one of the drivers to your computer.

Note!
If several identical drivers are displayed (as in the image above), then download the driver that has the most recent release date in the “Driver Version” column.

By clicking on the “Download” button, the driver will be downloaded to your computer and all that remains is to install it. There is nothing complicated at all in installing drivers, and I touched on this point in a separate article.

Note!

It happens that different drivers will be displayed in the list of drivers, for example:

This means that the hardware code may be similar for several devices. In this case, you can simply download and try installing all the proposed options until the required driver is installed.

As you can see, the driver was not difficult to find. Now I’ll look at another example to make it more clear :) I’ll find, for example, a driver for a device that is designated as an “Ethernet controller” in the device manager.

I right-click on the device and open properties:

In the window, select the “Details” tab, select “Equipment ID” from the list and copy the code from the 4th line:

I open the website devid.drp.su, indicate the copied number there, and delete everything in it, starting from the “&” symbol. Next, I select the Windows version and perform a search:

For my device and the version of Windows I selected, only one driver version was displayed, which I can download and install:

That's all!

However, it still occasionally happens that the website devid.drp.su does not find drivers for the hardware code you specified. In this case, there is an alternative option, which we will consider below.

An alternative option for searching for drivers by device code

If there are no drivers for the device you need on the well-known website devid.drp.su, then you can use this simple method:

Determining the device code. In the same way, copy the equipment code (4th line):

We are looking for a driver on various sites.

Now we go to the Google.com website and paste the copied code directly into the search bar, after which we remove the “&” symbol and everything that follows it from the code, for example:

PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C3A &SS_0780= PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C3A

We press the search button and a list of sites that match our request is displayed in front of us:

Now you need to open sites one by one, starting from the very first (top) and see if you can download drivers on the site.

It’s worth noting right away that you won’t find the driver you need on all sites, since some of them will not have a driver for your version of Windows, and some will have all sorts of crap instead of drivers.

In the example image above, I circled those sites where drivers can actually most often be found and downloaded without any problems. These are the sites:

If you dig deeper into the search, you can find other sites where you can download the required driver. But you shouldn’t look for drivers on forums, as this is the longest way. You will have to read all the messages in a row to understand where the link to the driver you need is given.

Now let's look at a couple of examples of downloading drivers from different sites.

An example of downloading a driver from driver.ru:

When you get to the site from the search results, the page will already display drivers, most of which are compatible with your device.

Here you can simply download all the drivers that the site displays one by one and try installing them until the desired driver is installed. All incompatible drivers will either not be installed or simply will not work, so there is no need to be afraid of installing the wrong one.

Remember to pay attention to the version of Windows for which the driver is intended.

Keep in mind!
Drivers for Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 are very often compatible and if, for example, you couldn’t find drivers specifically for Windows 8.1, then try installing drivers for Windows 8. Or if you couldn’t find drivers for Windows 10, try installing from Windows 8.1 or Windows 8. It also happens that drivers for Windows 7 will be compatible with Windows 8, 8.1 and Windows 10. That is. You can try installing drivers from different systems.

Let's look at an example of the download process from this site. Having found the driver you need, click on the download button below:

In the next window, you need to confirm that you are not a robot by checking the box provided (see image below). Then click the “Download” button below:

And finally, on the next page we will see at the very top a download link in the form of a file name with the extension:

Click on it and download the file.

An example of downloading a driver from members.driverguide.com:

By going to the site from a search engine, the page will display a list of drivers that are likely compatible with your device:

Clicking on the download button will open new page, where a large amount of advertising catches the eye.

Attention!
Do not click anywhere if there is a lot of advertising on the site, be careful, otherwise you can pick up viruses and other infections on your computer!

In the next window, a window will appear in the center to confirm that you are a real person and not a program :) You need to wait for the contents of the window to load and click the “Show” button:

A new window will open, where we again wait a few seconds for the content to load. A code will appear in the window next to the inscription: “Enter.” This code needs to be rewritten exactly as it is in the line below (“Your Answer”) and click “Return to Page”:

You will be returned to the original page where the “Continue” button will now appear. Clicking it will begin downloading the driver to your computer:

Like this alternative way You can try to manually find drivers by device code. Of course, for this option, I showed examples of downloading the driver from only 2 sites, and there are a huge number of them. But the principle of downloading on all sites is the same. The only difference is mostly the interface and sometimes the download order.

But I am more inclined that you can easily find drivers using the main method proposed in option No. 1.

Option #2. Search for drivers on the official websites of device manufacturers

If you were unable to find drivers for your devices using option 1, then you can do it this way.

You will need to look at the manufacturer and model of each device on the computer through their documentation or special programs (for example, Aida64 or Sysinfo Detector), and then separately look for drivers for each device through the manufacturer’s official website or (if there are no drivers on the official website) on the Internet by device model.

Let's take this example. In the device manager, I can see that the driver for the video card and some other incomprehensible device is not installed in the system:

How did you determine that it was on the video card? But because if in the list of devices in the “Video Adapters” section there is a “Standard VGA Graphics Adapter” device, then there is no driver for the video card, otherwise the device would have the name of your video card, for example “NVIDIA GeForce GTX980”.

Let's look at the sequence of your actions:

Find out the manufacturer and model of the device.

Note!
If you have " Unknown device", then the driver for some device is probably not installed motherboard or a special program for the motherboard. Therefore, you must first install all the drivers for your motherboard and programs for it.

If you assembled a computer from separate components, then you might still have documents for each purchased device, which indicates what we need - manufacturer and model. If there is no documentation left, then one of the programs that detects the hardware of your computer will help you find out the model. I recommend Aida64 or Sysinfo Detector. The first one is paid, but you can use it for free for 30 days. And the second one has a completely free edition. If you are thinking about what to choose, then temporarily choose Aida64, since the quality of this program will still be higher.

How to install and use the Aida64 program is described in the article:

How to install and use Sysinfo Detector is described in the article:

If you define devices through the Aida64 program then you can determine what devices without drivers are by selecting the “Devices >” section on the left Windows devices" and then on the right open the category "Unknown". Information about the selected device will appear below:

So, in my example, the unknown device is called “Asus ATK-110 ACPI Utility”.

I mentioned above that an unknown device is most likely something on the motherboard, so let’s immediately determine which motherboard is in the device. To do this, open the “Motherboard” section and go to the same subsection. On the right in the window we will see the manufacturer and model motherboard: Asus P5KPL-AM EPU.

Now let's look at the video card. The video card is usually correctly detected in Aida64 through the Display > PCI/AGP Video section. As you can see, the program has identified the video card: “ nVIDIA GeForce GT 430":

If you are looking at devices through Sysinfo Detector, then you can see devices with uninstalled drivers in 2 ways. The first one is in the “Deviations” section:

As you can see, the same device was detected as through the Aida64 program: ACPI/ATK0110

And the second way is to select the “Unknown devices” subsection in the “PCI devices” section. Here the program immediately saw 3 “problem” devices and one of them was the motherboard: Asus P5KPL-AM EPU.

It is better to look at the manufacturer and model of the video card in the “PCI devices” section. In the list, find the “Display controller” subsection:

The example shows that the card manufacturer is NVIDIA, and the model is GeForce GT 430.

So, we have found out the necessary data and now we will look for the driver.

We are looking for a driver on device manufacturer websites.

We found out that there is a missing driver most likely for some device on the motherboard, or maybe some program specifically for the motherboard. The manufacturer of the board is Asus, and the model in my example is P5KPL-AM EPU. Since the manufacturer is Asus, we will look on the official Asus website.

How to search for the official website of the device manufacturer and download drivers from it is described in detail. In short, you need to open search engine Google, type the name of the manufacturer there and open the first site in the search results. Next, go to the “Service” or “Support” section and specify the device model, for example:

In addition to the drivers, pay attention to the “Utilities” section (you can see it in the list in the image above), because sometimes the “Unidentified Device” is some kind of uninstalled special program for the motherboard. It is better to install the entire motherboard kit provided on the site to check if this was the problem.

This example demonstrates searching for drivers for a motherboard. If you install all the drivers and utilities for it, then the “Unknown device” should disappear from the device manager.

Now let's find the driver for the video card. Judging by the data taken from the Aida64 and Sysinfo Detector programs, the video card manufacturer is NVIDIA, and the model is GeForce GT 430. Since the manufacturer is NVIDIA, then we are looking for the official website of this company in the same way via Google:

On the website we immediately see the “Drivers” section and in it the “Download drivers” item. Opening:

A window will open where you need to specify information about the video card. The product type in my example is “GeForce”, if the model is GeForce GT 430, then the product series is “GeForce 400 Series”. It's not difficult to navigate here. Next, in the “Product Family” list, select a specific model – “GeForce GT 430”. All that remains is to select the version of Windows installed on your computer and the driver language. Then click “Search”:

The download page will open the required driver. Click the “Download Now” button:

On the next page we accept the terms of the agreement and click the “Accept and Download” button:

In the same way, you can download a driver for, in principle, any device, knowing its manufacturer and model. You just need to find the manufacturer’s official website and indicate the model there.

As a last resort, if, for example, you cannot find drivers on the official website, you can search for them on other sites by specifying Google search An example request is: “driver for Asus P5KPL-AM EPU.” Instead of Asus P5KPL-AM EPU, you, accordingly, need to indicate the manufacturer and model of your device for which you are looking for drivers.

Well, in conclusion, I would like to note that if you use Windows 8 and older, then you most likely will not have problems with drivers. In most cases, these systems install all drivers automatically immediately after Windows installations. I tried to reinstall Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 on several laptops and all the drivers were automatically installed on each one, which eliminated the need to search for them myself.

I consider this article complete. Now you can find the driver you need by device code or by its manufacturer and model. Let me remind you that you may need these options for searching for drivers if you independently selected components for your computer or changed some parts in a purchased computer.

It is also possible to automatically install drivers on your computer using special programs. This possibility is described in a separate article:

All the best! See you in other articles :)

Apparently, there is no need to say that most users know that for the correct operation of absolutely everything installed on a computer, equipment in the form of “hardware” components and some virtual devices, special software called drivers is required. However, quite often questions arise about, for example, where the printer driver is located in Windows 7 (as well as in other operating systems of this family) or some other device connected to the system, when control software needs to be integrated into the system manually. Let's try to find out, taking into account some of the nuances associated with installing and updating such software components.

Where is the installed driver folder in Windows 7 and other systems?

On various forums on the Internet, questions related to determining the exact location of the driver for a particular device can be found quite often.

Some users claim that the main directory is the System32 directory in the root folder of the system, others believe that the storage location for the control software is the drivers directory subfolded in System32 or the DriverStore folder. Who is right? Both are right, since, depending on the type of driver itself (SYS, VXD, DRV, etc.), the location of the files may change.

How to determine the exact location of the driver?

Now let's try to find out where the drivers are located in Windows 7 by determining their exact location on the disk in system partition. To do this, it is absolutely not necessary to “dig up” the specified folders manually. In addition, when you search by device name, you are unlikely to find the corresponding driver.

The easiest way is to use the standard “Device Manager”, select the desired device, go to the properties item through the RMB menu and click the details button on the driver tab. After this, a special window will be displayed, which will show all absolute (full) paths to the directory in which they are located.

Where are the drivers in Windows 7 for updating?

However, knowing the exact location of the control software may not be enough to update it. Many users rely solely on the operating system itself when trying to install updates. In general, true. However, in this situation, it should be remembered that when searching for the necessary Windows drivers First of all, it scans already installed components.

If you set a search for updated drivers on the network (Internet), access is made only to Microsoft Corporation databases, and drivers are installed that are either digitally signed by the corporation or software those manufacturers for which support is declared. In this situation, it is better to use automated applications. But where are the drivers in Windows 7 that can be updated? Unfortunately, they are not in the system. But the corresponding programs access exclusively the websites of equipment manufacturers and developers of such software, after which they install updated components without user intervention.

Where are the drivers loaded during manual download?

Finally, let's look at where the drivers are located in Windows 7 for cases where the user found and downloaded them themselves. Usually in browsers that are installed in all latest versions Windows folder To save downloads, the “Downloads” directory is silently assigned, and the presence of such folders is provided for all accounts registered in the system. If your browser is enabled to constantly prompt you to save downloaded content, you can specify the folder yourself. Typically, files in EXE or INF formats are available for download.

In the first case, the driver and accompanying software are installed by launching the applet as an administrator, in the second - through the RMB menu and selecting the installation item. If the system reports that this type of action is not supported, the update can be done through the “Device Manager” by using the browse button to indicate where the INF file was saved.

Hello dear friends!

I would like to congratulate you on the “Day of Knowledge”. I wish that the knowledge you gain will help you in your life practice.

In honor of this event, I have prepared a guide for you on how to find and install the latest drivers for your computer.

Method 1. Search for drivers by device codes.

Every day thousands and thousands of users face the problem of finding drivers.

Once upon a time I myself encountered this problem and, of course, as an ordinary user I began to look for the drivers I needed in Yandex. Often, this drove me crazy, because instead of the driver just being in the downloaded archive, I was prompted to send an SMS from my phone.

In general, all this was problematic until I found a very valuable resource (driver database, if you like) and in this article, I will share with you a very convenient and in a fast way search.

So, we will use the resource http://devid.info

By typing the address in address bar, we get to home page bases:

And I would like to immediately draw your attention to several points.

Firstly, you can switch the site language (if required).

Secondly, on the website you can find brief instructions, by searching for drivers on the site. To open it, just click on the “Where can I find the device code?” button. But in this article, I will describe it to you clearly and clearly, based on the Russian version of Windows 7 Maximum.

Third. You can install the program created by the developers of this database. It's called DevID.

To download it, just click the “Launch” button and the download will begin. Then, the utility itself will find devices for which drivers were not found.

I want to offer you a manual installation method.

You will ask why"?

The answer is very simple. Windows 7 is created on such a basis that the system itself will find drivers for your devices, but there is one good old “BUT”.

Not always, drivers installed by the system by default may be suitable and therefore it is better to install fresh drivers.

Step 1. Device Manager. Search for devices that require drivers.

So. To get to the device manager, you will need to go to computer properties:

(Right-click on the “Computer” icon, then click on “Properties”)

The “System” window will open in front of us, where on the left you can see several items through which you can go to the necessary windows. We are interested in the “Device Manager” item:

After clicking, a window will open in front of you, with full list devices that are installed on your computer.

Particular attention is required to the following points:

Sound, video and gaming devices

Network adapters

It is these two points that cause many problems for users.

Let's look at an example of searching for a driver using my example network card:

Go to device properties (Right click on this device, properties).

The “Properties” window opened in front of us:

In it, we need to select the “Information” tab.

Then, open the pop-up window and select “Path to device instance” in it. Below, in the “Value” window, you will see the code (Ex. PCI\VEN_10E...)

Click on it, and then hold down the key combination CTRL+C (The code will be copied to your computer’s clipboard).

Step 2. Search for the required driver by device code.

Go back to the browser and insert the device code into the search bar: Click on the “Search” button. Now, a window pops up in front of us, where from the list provided, we can select the latest driver:

Pay attention to the driver download date (IMPORTANT! Drivers from this year may not always be available for your device, so choose the latest one).

Click on the “Download” button, then, in the page that opens, we find:

Method 2. Search for drivers by the name of your device.

Searching for a driver by code is not always correct.

Well, at least because drivers for video cards, for example, come bundled with the control panel and the same devid.info contains non-updated drivers.

What to do?

The answer is simple. Each company provides support for its products. This support also includes the creation of device drivers.

Why update drivers?

Each driver naturally contains code. The manufacturer, reworking the code, adds some new features to the driver that were not present in the previous one. For example, a new version drivers for video AMD cards(Catalyst 11.9) contains a number of improvements that allow you to achieve an increase in the number of frames per second, which makes the picture smoother. Also, without a driver, your screen resolution will not be supported almost 100% and this will distort the entire picture. So that it (resolution) is up to date and supported by your monitor, as well as for running 3D applications (for example, games).

Drivers for the chipset of your motherboard are needed so that the board itself functions faster, as well as correctly detecting the devices that are inserted into it.

In general, the conclusion is simple, drivers are simply necessary for you to work comfortably at your computer.

Step 1. Determining the name of the device that requires a driver ( specific example: video card)

To do this, you will need a simple, convenient and free PC Wizard 2010 program.

Here we can see the brand of motherboard, video card, network card, etc.

Unfortunately, the program does not always correctly display the name of your video card.

For example, for me, only the 5800 series is indicated, but 5800 itself does not exist. There are 5850 and 5870.

CPU-Z will be able to accurately determine the name of your video card:

Step 2. Driver search, download, installation.

Did you find out the name?

Well, now we have two options.

1. We can just go to http://radeon.ru and download the latest driver from there:

The first 4 drivers are for all desktop video cards.

AGP – for older video cards with the old AGP bus.

Mobility drivers are for video cards built into the laptop.

1) Select download drivers.

2) Next, select the video card and operating system you need from the list - click on the “Search” button.

3) Click on the "Download Now" button

4) Click on the “Accept and Download” button

The driver will be downloaded, all that remains is to install it by double clicking the mouse.

For other devices, everything is searched by analogy. Each manufacturer has its own support site. All you need to know is the brand of the device. You can determine the brand of the device using free program PCWizard.

To get to the manufacturer’s website, just enter the manufacturer’s brand into the yandex.ru search engine and the official website with Russian language support will be among the first links.

That's all.

Have questions? Write in the comments.

Good computer knowledge to you.

Best regards, Artem.

P.S. Thank you for your help in writing this article, my assistant Vitaly.