Hardware Drivers

One of the most common problems with a Windows PC is missing drivers for hardware.

Missing hardware drivers may impair the performance of the PC if it is a driver for a critical component such as the Power Management feature of a mainboard which in turn will result in the CPU speed not being optimized by the system.

Attached is a screenshot of the above mentioned.


To find out if your PC have such an issue, Right click on "My Computer", Select "Properties", "Hardware" and click on "Device Manager" within the same tab.

If there are any exclamation[red in colour] or question[yellow in colour] marks, there may be some hardware drivers issue.

To resolve them, one way is to find the hardware driver on the web via manufacturer's site.
But complication arises when the exact manufacturer is not know or the device name on the above screen is too generic to identify which hardware is causing the driver problem.

Thankfully there are easier ways to identify the hardware which has driver problems and update to its latest driver.

Though there are many tools to automatically update your device drivers, these have had some negative reviews as it provided outdated drivers or in some cases made the PC worse than before.

The surefire way to update or correct device driver issues would be to identify the hardware that is causing the problems. But let's face it, not all hardware terms are easily understood by most users. And the average user would not be knowledgeable enough to troubleshoot by removing pieces of PC hardware.

A good and reliable tool is required.

I have been using DriverGuide to download hardware device drivers since its early beginnings.
It's involvement in providing users with correct device drivers has allowed it to evolve to a point whereby, they have their own application to scan the PC for device drivers related problem and will recommend updated or correct drivers for the user to install.

If you are not comfortable in installing this software, you could also use the webtool, whereby only an ActiveX module is installed in your Internet Explorer.

If you choose not to use the application, there is also a step by step guide to identifying the problem hardware.

Registration is required but its free to register.


Today is 26th March 2009
Time now is 13:14 hrs