40 Advanced Troubleshooting
Drivers

What Is a Driver?

A driver is a program that controls a device such as a printer, mouse, or keyboard. All devices require a driver
program.
A driver acts like a translator between the device and any other programs that use the device. Each device
has its own set of specialized commands that only its driver recognizes.
Dell ships your computer to you with required drivers already installed—no further installation or
configuration is needed.
Many drivers, such as the keyboard driver, come with your Microsoft
®
Windows
®
operating system. You
may need to install drivers if you:
• Upgrade your operating system.
• Reinstall your operating system.
• Connect or install a new device.

Identifying Drivers

If you experience a problem with any device, identify whether the driver is the source of your problem and, if
necessary, update the driver.
1
Click the
Start
button and click
Control Panel
.
2
Under
Pick a Category
, click
Performance and Maintenance
.
3
Click
System
.
4
In the
System Properties
window, click the
Hardware
tab.
5
Click
Device Manager
.
6
Scroll down the list to see if any device has an exclamation point (a yellow circle with a [
!]
) on the
device icon.
If an exclamation point is next to the device name, you may need to reinstall the driver or install a new
driver.

Reinstalling Drivers

NOTICE: The Dell Support website at support.dell.com provides approved drivers for Dell™ computers. If you
install drivers obtained from other sources, your computer might not work correctly.