Updating your Windows drivers is an important step in keeping your computer up to date and running smoothly. Drivers enable your system to communicate with and use hardware and peripherals connected to it. Outdated or missing drivers can lead to stability issues and worse. Fortunately, updating your Windows drivers has become much easier over the years. Here’s how to do it.
1. Identify Your Drivers
The first step in updating your drivers is to identify which ones need to be updated. To do this, you can either manually check the device manager for each driver or use driver update software.
Manually checking the Device Manager:
The device manager is a tool built into the Windows operating system which tells you about all of the hardware connected to your computer. To check the device manager, open it by pressing the Windows key + X, then selecting “Device Manager.”
Once in the device manager, you should see a list of installed devices, such as your graphics card, audio card, etc. If a device has a yellow exclamation mark next to it, it indicates that the driver is either outdated or missing. You can right-click on the device to view more information about it, and also update the driver if needed.
Using Driver Update Software
Driver update software allows you to quickly and easily scan your system for outdated or missing drivers. The software will compare the drivers installed on your system against a large database of available drivers and flag any that are outdated or missing. It will then provide easy links to the latest version or the correct driver for you to download and install.
2. Download and Install the Drivers
Once you have identified the needed drivers, you can begin to download and install them.
For manually updated drivers, you will need to locate the website of the hardware manufacturer and look for the latest driver download. Once located, simply download the file and run it to install the driver.
For driver update software, the update process is much easier. Most driver update software will allow you to select the outdated or missing driver that you want to update and with a single click of your mouse, the software will automatically search for, download and install the correct driver.
3. Update Your Drivers Regularly
Once you have completed the driver update process, it is important to check for updates regularly. New drivers are released often and you may find that your system is not performing as well as it should due to outdated drivers.
If you use driver update software, you will usually be able to set it to automatically check for updates at regular intervals. This ensures that your drivers are always kept up to date and your system is running optimally.
Conclusion
Updating Windows drivers is an important part of keeping your system running smoothly and securely. While it used to be a complicated and time-consuming process, it has become much easier thanks to the availability of driver update software. By following the steps outlined above, you can quickly and easily update your Windows drivers any time you need to.