There is a question mark, no driver update required. How to update the ATI Radeon video card driver
A list of almost all devices (even non-working ones) is contained in the Device Manager. Broken device branches are automatically expanded and the device icon displays a tiny yellow exclamation mark. In addition, there may be another item in the list - Unknown Devices.
These are the most obvious signs of driver problems, and such problems are easy to solve. (Of course, this could also be due to incorrect BIOS settings or hardware failure... but most often it's a driver issue.)
To check the current device driver, double-click on the line of the hardware you are interested in in the Device Manager window and in the window that opens, go to the Driver tab. Looking at the driver's release date is the easiest, although not sure-fire, way to determine that the installed driver is part of Windows 7. If you see the date July 13, 2009 (the operating system's first release) and the version number 6.1.7600.xxxxx, then this is the driver that came with Windows 7. Otherwise, it is most likely a driver installed from a disk, from the device manufacturer's website, from a Windows Update, or left over from a previous version of Windows. Although you can judge the freshness of a driver by its release date, you should not rely solely on it.
Click the Driver Details button to check what files this driver uses. Sometimes a driver cannot be loaded simply because one of the required files is missing or damaged - a problem that updating the driver does not always solve. In such cases, it is most useful to remove and reinstall the device (more on this later).
Have you recently updated your driver? Will cancel!” The latest update can be #% done by clicking the Roll Back Driver button in Device Manager. Even more
1 $" reliable protection is provided by the Double Driver utility, which can be downloaded for free from the site http://vyrww.boozet.org/dd.htm. This utility saves an archive of drivers for all equipment installed in the system, so you never have to There are no problems with deleting damaged drivers and restoring reliable and proven ones. The DriverMax utility (download it for free from the site http://www.innovative-sol.com/drivermax/) allows you to copy driver files from one computer to another - useful when it fails. find the installer.
To install a new device driver, right-click on the device in the Device Manager window and select Update Driver Software. At the prompt, select the folder containing the latest and greatest driver that you just downloaded from the manufacturer's website and, if necessary, extracted from Zip-apxiiBa.
Or you can start all over again. Right-click on the device and select Uninstall from the context menu. Then, from the Action menu, select Scan for hardware changes.
When troubleshooting hardware problems, it is important not to forget about updating the firmware; More on this in the next box.
FIRMWARE: HARDWARE SOFTWARE
The firmware of many modern devices, including hard drives, printers, video cards and, of course, motherboards, can be updated by users themselves. Firmware is software written inside a device that controls most of its functions. Although the new firmware won't be able to, for example, increase the capacity of your hard drive, it can improve performance and fix bugs in devices such as wireless routers, DVD players, motherboards and even digital cameras.
The beauty of firmware is that it saves you money. Let's say the manufacturer of your device releases a new version. You download the latest firmware from the manufacturer’s website, install it and receive a new device completely free of charge.
A driver is a special program that allows a PC to recognize commands from a particular device and translate them into program code, thereby ensuring the operation of the device. Equipment connected to the computer will not work correctly if a driver is not installed for it.
As a rule, a driver disk is included with the equipment when you purchase it. However, over time, the driver installed from the disk becomes outdated, as a result of which not only the equipment itself, but also the computer may not work correctly. To fix the glitch, the driver needs to be updated.
How to update drivers on a computer: two ways
You can update drivers on your PC in two ways - using standard Windows tools and using third-party programs. In the first case, the update is performed using a tool called Device Manager, which can be found in the Toolbox.
As for the second case, it must be said that today there is, of course, more than one program for updating drivers. In our article we will look at the process of updating drivers using the example of one of the most popular programs in this area - Driver Booster. This program has a number of advantages - it is free, has a simple, understandable and, most importantly, Russified interface.
How to update drivers in Windows 7 using standard system tools
As we said above, updating Windows drivers using standard system tools is carried out using the Tool Manager tool. How to find it and update using it, read the instructions below:
2. In the window that opens, opposite the word “View”, set the value to “Small icons” (upper right corner).
4. A window will appear in front of you, in which you need to select the device for which you need to update the driver - for example, we need to update the video adapter driver.
5. Right-click on the video adapter model and select “Properties”.
6. In the window that opens, select the “Driver” tab and click the “Update” button.
7. You will be offered two update options - automatic and manual. In the first case, the system will independently search for an update for the driver of this video adapter on the Internet, download it and install it, in the second, the system will search for the update only on the PC and will be able to install it only if you have previously downloaded the update yourself.
You can download the necessary driver yourself on the Internet. To do this, you will need to enter into a search engine the model of the device for which a driver is required, select a proven site from the query results (many recommend the site driver.ru) and download the necessary driver.
8. After pressing the appropriate button, the system will start working - first it will search for programs, and then the update process will begin.
It is possible that the system will notify you that the driver of the selected device does not need to be updated. This means that you really do not need to update the driver, and the system or hardware glitch is not due to an outdated driver, but to another reason.
9. When the update is completed, restart your computer. Done - the driver is updated!
How to update drivers in Windows 7 using Driver Booster
Updating Windows drivers can be done very easily using the special Drive Booster program. How to do it? Follow the instructions below:
1. Download the program from of this resource. It will be downloaded as a single .exe extension file - double-click on it with the left mouse button, and the installation will take place automatically.
2. Launch the program - the first time you launch it, it will automatically detect which drivers are outdated and require updating.
3. When the program generates a report, you can either update all drivers at once, or carry out a selective update by unchecking those updates that you do not want to install.
4. The procedure for updating drivers takes a lot of time, and therefore, if you update many drivers at once, there is no point in sitting at your PC waiting for the process to complete, especially since the process is also resource-intensive and you will not be able to do any work normally, especially if you have a weak PC.
Note! Significant glitches and lags during the update process are quite acceptable!
5. Once the update process is complete, all you have to do is restart your PC and the program will notify you of the success of the operation.
Results
So, now you know how to update drivers on your computer and you understand that this task is quite simple. It’s up to you to decide which update method to choose. But in general, if you need to update one driver and you know which one, standard Windows tools are enough, you don’t need to download any third-party software. And if you don’t know which driver is the problem and/or want to update several drivers at once, you are, of course, better off using Driver Booster. We wish you good luck and hope everything works out for you!
How to force install drivers on Windows 7.
This type of driver installation almost always helps when the driver for the device is not installed by simply running the installation file setup, with extensions *.exe or *.msi.
But the main condition for successful driver installation in this case is that the driver must be completely unpacked and the file with the extension *.inf must be available. Often, hardware manufacturers package their drivers not only with standard ZIP archivers, but also using intricate programs of their own making. Here a program can be very useful for unpacking Universal Extractor, which can be used to unpack almost any driver installer.
Let's consider how to force install a driver in Windows 7 using a webcam as an example Defender AV-W2035. There is a driver downloaded from the Internet AV-W2035_VISTA.zip, which we successfully unpacked into a folder C:/AW-0350-MIC-VISTA. First, we need to look at where our file with the extension is located *.inf. To do this, you need to enable the display of file extensions in Windows folder properties so that file names are written with their extensions. Or use a very useful program Total Commander or similar file manager. After looking through the folders (you can use the file search), we found the file snpstd2.inf
You should remember the entire path to this file so that later it will be easier to find it in Conductor. We connect the camera to the computer and wait for Windows to complete all its operations to detect new hardware.
Opening device Manager (Start –> Control Panel –> Device Manager)
The device is immediately visible USB camera without installed drivers. Right-click on the camera and select the item in the context menu Update drivers...
in the window that opens, click
and then select the button Further
A window will open with a list of equipment categories.
In order not to waste time and not rack your brains, we simply point to the first line Show all devices and press the button Further
In the next window we will see a list of available drivers in the system (if any). But since we know that we have a folder with the driver, without selecting anything from the list, we click on the button
Press the button Review…
and using Explorer we look for our file with the extension *.inf, select it with the mouse and follow the button Open
and, of course, a button OK
Now our driver will appear in the window with a list of available drivers (if the driver is not suitable for the equipment, the system will generate an error).
Here you should pay attention to the checkbox Compatible devices only. The fact is that if the connected equipment has not been tested for compatibility with the installed version of Windows, then a driver for it will not be found, despite the fact that it may be completely working. Therefore, in some cases, this checkbox should be unchecked and the driver search repeated again.
So, after the file with the driver is found, select our driver in the list with the mouse and press the button Further
The driver installation will begin.
A Windows warning may appear indicating that the driver you are installing is not digitally signed or has not been tested for compatibility. If you are sure that the driver was taken from a reliable source and is exactly intended for the equipment being installed, then you should absolutely not be afraid of such a warning, but should agree to further install the driver. When the installation is complete, the system will display a completion window.
You can verify successful driver installation by checking Device Manager, where the connected device will no longer have a question mark, and its name will change to the correct one created by the manufacturer. In our case with the camera, this will be the device that appears with the name USB PC Camera (SN9C103)
The installation is complete, you can safely start using your new equipment!
Setting up the video subsystem requires that the correct monitor driver be installed on the computer. In fact, of course, the monitor does not need any driver - it is already capable of working, although not at full capacity, but for computer games the presence of a driver is mandatory - let's look at the topic in detail - how install or update monitor driver.
In fact, a monitor driver is simply an information file that records the maximum capabilities of the monitor. When installing the driver, these parameters are transferred to the registry Windows, and from there they are presented to the video card driver. Our goal is simple: to notify the video card driver about what the monitor is really capable of. This is necessary so that later, when setting up the video card, you do not set parameters that could damage the monitor.
To perform settings related to monitor and video card drivers, use the button - Advanced on the tab - Settings dialog box - Properties: Screen - for Windows XP . For Windows 7 : Start - Control Panel - Appearance and Personalization - Screen - Screen Resolution - Advanced Settings. This opens the video adapter and monitor properties dialog box:
This window has no standards (not standardized) and for different video cards (and even for different drivers of the same video card) it may have different controls (adapter, diagnostics, color management, etc.). However, those controls that we will talk about further are present in any case - you just need to find them.
First of all, open the Monitor tab and make sure that the monitor is uniquely defined - its model should be clearly indicated (in my case, as shown in the picture above, a standard PnP monitor, since I have a laptop). If this is the case, then the monitor is known to the operating system, and nothing else needs to be done.
The only thing you can do is try update monitor driver:
To do this, click the update button, as in the figure above, and follow the suggested actions of the Update Wizard.
If the monitor is not defined or there is a type entry instead - Standard monitor then the monitor is not known to the system and you need to install its driver. There is a button for this - Change . When you click it, the Driver Update Wizard starts.
Further actions depend on whether you have a disk with a monitor driver or not. If there are no drivers, knowing the monitor manufacturer and specific model will be very helpful (this information can be found in the documentation for the monitor). If there is neither documentation nor the slightest idea about the monitor model and its manufacturer, then it is unlikely that you will be able to achieve optimal settings - although in our age this is basically impossible. This situation happens with very old monitors.
- The first window of the Wizard is informational - we skip it. Work begins from the second window.
- In the second window of the Wizard, turn on the switch - Display a list of all drivers so that you can select the most suitable one. Don't look at what Master recommends turning on another switch - it’s better for us to rely not on automation, but on ourselves. After clicking the button - Further The following Wizard window opens.
- Here is a list of various equipment. Since we are installing the monitor driver, select the item from the list - Monitors. Click the button Further- a dialog box will open - Driver Update.
- In this window, turn on the Show full list of devices switch.
- From this point on, the order of further actions is different, depending on whether you have a driver. The best option is when it is available. In this case, click the button - Install from disk.
- The next dialog box is called Install from Disk. Use the Browse button to fill in the input field. It must contain the access path to the folder in which the monitor driver is stored. Click OK.
- After reading the list of drivers located in the folder you specified, the system will display it in the Driver Update window. Make sure the switch is Show full list of devices enabled, and select the most suitable driver from the list. Click OK.
- In subsequent Wizard windows, click Next. In the last window, click Finish.
- Once the driver installation is complete, make sure that the correct monitor information appears on the Monitor tab of the video card properties dialog box.
... If you don’t have a monitor driver at hand, but you know the device manufacturer and model number, then return to step 5. and try to select a monitor driver from the database that comes with the Windows operating system.
- In the Driver Update dialog box there are two lists: left - Manufacturers; right - Models. Select your monitor manufacturer from the left list and your model number from the right list. Click OK.
- In subsequent Wizard windows, click Next. In the last window, click the button - Finish.
Once the driver installation is complete, make sure that the correct information about the monitor appears on the Monitor tab of the video card properties dialog box, as written at the beginning of the article.
If in the dialog box - Driver update, the manufacturer of your monitor is missing or there is no model like yours, which means you should use the Internet.
Using any search engine, search by company name Web-the address of its website and find a link there that allows you to select and download the desired driver. As a rule, hardware manufacturers post links to download drivers in the Support section.
If the product was manufactured a very long time ago and its manufacturer has closed long ago, then you can turn to popular collections of drivers on the websites WWW or to Web forums where users share their problems.
For example, the service enjoys a well-deserved reputation DriverPack Solution(http://drp.su/ru/), leading driver database. The service is free, you don’t even need to register - I RECOMMEND it.
And finally, the most difficult case is when nothing is known about the product at all, except that it really is a monitor. Then in the dialog box - Driver Update, select Standard monitors in the Manufacturers list, and one of the models depending on the screen size in the Models list. For example, if the screen size is 15.6 inches, select either 1366 x 768, based on the resolution you will be working with. If it suddenly turns out that the monitor “cannot handle” a higher value, retreat to a lower one.
Dear readers - in this article I tried to explain - how to install or update the monitor driver, namely, the principle of updating the monitor driver so that this issue no longer causes you difficulties.
This is not such a common situation, but when servicing a large fleet of user computers, sometimes it happens that for some device the manufacturer has not released drivers for the required OS version. This could be an old version of the OS, or an old device. All in all. Sometimes you need to install drivers manually. They are usually supplied in the form of several files. Most often they have the extension inf or sys, but they can also be different.
The procedure for installing a driver in Windows 10 depends on how you install it. Each method has its pros and cons. The most important advantage is that any user, from beginner to expert, can choose the most convenient one for themselves, avoiding system errors and program crashes in the future. We will look at each method in detail separately. Remember that the most important thing is to use drivers from reliable sources so as not to damage the operating system or accidentally launch a virus, the elimination of which will take much more time and effort than installing any driver.
What you need to install the driver
In order to install the driver manually, you need an installation disk or special software that will help you step by step through the entire installation procedure. Below we will look at one of these programs - Driver Easy. There are situations when, due to incompatibility, the driver from the installation disk generates an error. It is in such cases that we need programs that will help us find and update the driver. In addition, this option will be more acceptable for owners of netbooks, which often do not have a disk drive. For such cases, there is an option to install the necessary driver from a USB drive, we will also look at that today, since this method has its own characteristics.
Manual installation - instructions
Installing the driver manually using Device Manager
1. Open the Windows 10 Control Panel by pressing the Win + X key at the same time (Windows key and X key) and left-click on “Control Panel”
2. For convenience, it is advisable to set up small icons.
3. Click on “Device Manager”.
In the Device Manager window, expand the categories and find the device you need. Then right-click on the device name and select Update Driver Software. The photo shows an example of installing the Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller network adapter driver.
Installing the driver manually using Driver Easy
1. In the main window of the Driver Easy program, click on the driver of the device that needs to be updated. After this, you will see the standard task manager window, which was described above. Select the device to update.
2. You will see two options in the pop-up window. Click Browse My Computer to install the driver software.
3. Click Browse to locate the downloaded driver file.
Click the Down Triangle button in Driver Easy, then select Open File Location to open the driver folder.
For convenience, you can copy and paste the location of the downloaded files into the field.
The path to the file:
As you already understood, the update takes a lot of time and requires basic knowledge of working with a personal computer. In addition to updating manually, Driver Easy can automatically search, download and install all drivers that need updating. But, as we already said, this is not safe, since this function works in automatic mode, and in this case it is impossible to make a backup copy in case of a serious failure.
Installing the driver from a CD or DVD
Almost all computer and hardware manufacturers provide a set of drivers for various hardware devices. For example, the driver CD that comes with your printer contains drivers for many different printers, not just the one you purchased. When installing drivers, make sure that you are installing drivers for your printer model and not for another one. Also, make sure that you are installing it for the version of Windows that is installed on your computer. The process of installing a driver from a CD is no different from the standard installation process of any other program. Be sure to follow all instructions in the installer the first time you run it. In some cases, you need to remove the old driver before installing the new one.
If you have a driver CD but your computer doesn't have a drive or it doesn't work, you can also load the drivers from a USB drive.
Installing drivers from a USB drive
After copying the drivers to a USB drive, you can install the necessary software on your computer. Make sure the drive is connected to your computer, open Windows Explorer and find your device name in it. For example, if you have a USB drive that is assigned to the E: drive when connected, then you need to click on the icon named E: in order for the contents to open.
Once the drivers are found on the disk, you must determine exactly how they will be installed on your computer. If the directory contains executable files or an installation file (extension *.exe), then you can install the driver using this file. If the drivers are compressed into a ZIP file, you will need to extract the file using archivers such as 7-Zip and WinZip.
Installing inf file
If the above recommendations did not help you, then all instructions for installing drivers and hardware devices are always contained in a file with the .inf extension, which is located in the C: Windowsinf folder. The folder containing the information files is protected and hidden. To make it appear, in the folder view settings, check the “Hidden items” checkbox. To find the information file for the device you need, follow these instructions:
Once you know the file name, go back to Task Manager, select the device, click Update Driver and specify the path to the *.inf file (in this example it will be C:Windowsinfoem3.inf).
