Dell 9300 owner manual What Is a Driver?, Identifying Drivers, Reinstalling Drivers

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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.

1Click the Start button and click Control Panel.

2Under Pick a Category, click Performance and Maintenance.

3Click System.

4In the System Properties window, click the Hardware tab.

5Click Device Manager.

6Scroll 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. See the following subsection, "Reinstalling Drivers."

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.

You can reinstall drivers in the following ways:

•Use Windows XP Device Driver Rollback.

•Reinstall drivers manually.

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Solving Problems