Many computer issues are caused by outdated device drivers.
So when you have a computer issue, the first thing you should do is check to see if your drivers are up to date. And if they’re not, update them.
Driver Easy, makes updating your Windows drivers easy.
Many computer issues are caused by outdated device drivers. Particularly in Windows 10.
So if your computer has slowed down, you should update your drivers. If it’s crashing or hanging, update your drivers. If you can’t connect to the internet, update your drivers. If your mouse, keyboard, monitor or speakers are acting up, update your drivers. In fact, no matter what your issue, there’s a good chance updating your drivers will fix it.
To understand why, you first have to understand what drivers actually are.
Drivers are like interpreters between Windows and your devices. For example, when Windows needs to display something on your monitor, it sends a command to your graphics card, and your graphics card then displays what Windows wants on your monitor.
But Windows and your graphics card don’t actually speak the same language. To understand each other, they need a translator. That translator is called a driver. It takes the Windows command and translates it into something your graphics card can understand. Your graphics card can then do as it’s told, and display the right thing on your monitor.
Similarly, if your graphics card needs to send some sort of response back to Windows, the driver translates the response into something Windows can understand.
In this example, what we’re talking about is a video driver, but your computer has many other drivers on it too – one for each device. Your speakers, your printer, your mouse, your USB hard drives, your network card, your keyboard and so on – they each have an associated driver.
And without all these drivers, none of your devices will work.
Every now and then, Microsoft will change the commands Windows sends to one of your devices (e.g. your network card). When this happens, the manufacturer of that device need to change the device driver too. They need to teach it the new Windows commands. Otherwise the drivers won’t be able to translate those commands for your devices, and your devices won’t work properly.
The same thing needs to happen when your device manufacturer changes the way your device talks, or the things it can do. They need to change the driver too. Otherwise Windows won’t be able to talk to the device, or take advantage of its new functionality, and your device won’t work properly.
Now when we say “your device won’t work properly”, sometimes this means simply that you miss out on new functionality or minor bug fixes. But it’s often a lot more serious than that. Your computer may even hang, crash or stop working completely. Remember, there’s a driver that controls your hard drive, for instance. If Windows can’t talk to your hard drive, it can’t access any of the data on your drive. Similarly, if Windows can’t talk to your network card, you won’t be able to access the internet, and if it can’t talk to your graphics card, you won’t be able to see anything on your monitor. These are just a few of the more serious issues outdated drivers can cause.
Windows comes with an inbuilt tool, called ‘Windows Update’, that’s supposed to automatically keep your drivers up to date. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work very well.
So now that you know why outdated drivers cause so many issues, and why you can’t rely on Windows to update them for you, the question is, how do you update your drivers yourself? You can do this either manually or automatically.
If you don’t know much about computers, or you just don’t have the time to manually update your drivers, you’re in luck. You can use our tool, Driver Easy Pro, to do it automatically.
If you’re having issues with your computer or something’s not behaving as you expect, the first thing you should do is see if your computer has outdated drivers. If it does, updating them will very often fix things.
There’s a way to update your drivers automatically, but if you want to do it manually, one option is to use our tool, Driver Easy FREE.
Driver Easy is a driver update tool used by more than 3 million customers around the world. The free version will automatically identify and download the drivers you need; you can then manually install them.
In other words, it eliminates the need to update your drivers the difficult way.
E.g. If your graphics card isn’t working properly or you want to ensure you’re getting the best possible performance from your monitor, you can scan your computer with Driver Easy FREE, and if a new driver is available for your graphics card, Driver Easy will tell you. You can then just click to download the driver. Once downloaded, you can manually install it.
