When configuring Windows Vista, you may have to install pre-existing and new device drivers. In this excerpt from Chapter 3 of the book "Windows Vista Administrator's Pocket Consultant," author William R. Stanek explains how to install pre-existing and new device drivers.
Unlike earlier releases of Windows, Windows Vista automatically detects devices that were not installed after upgrading or installing the operating system. If a device wasn't installed because Windows Vista didn't include the driver, the built-in hardware diagnostics will, in many cases, detect the hardware and then use the automatic update framework to retrieve the required driver the next time Windows Update runs, provided that Windows Update is enabled and you've allowed driver updating as well as operating system updating.
Driver updates are not installed automatically. After upgrading or installing the operating system, you should check for driver updates and apply them as appropriate before trying other techniques to install device drivers. Although a complete discussion of working with automatic updating is covered in Chapter 15, the basic steps of checking for updates are as follows:
After you've installed the device driver, Windows Vista should both detect the hardware within several minutes and install the device automatically. If Windows Vista detects the device but isn't able to install the device automatically, Windows Vista starts the Driver Software Installation component, which in turn starts the Found New Hardware wizard. In the Found New Hardware wizard (shown in Figure 3-4) you can then click Locate And Install Driver Software (Recommended) to continue with the installation. The Driver Software Installation component will then search for preconfigured drivers.
Figure 3-4 Start the installation by clicking Locate and Install Driver Software
(Recommended).
The Driver Software Installation component should use the driver that you've just made available on the computer to complete the installation. If it doesn't do this for some reason, you'll see a wizard page that asks you to allow Windows to search online for the driver software. Click Don't Search Online. You'll then be prompted to insert the disk that came with the hardware device. Continue with the installation as discussed in the next section, starting with step 3.
Installing New Devices on Windows Vista
Most available new devices are Plug and Play compatible. This means that you should be able to
install new devices easily by using one of the following techniques:
Depending on the device, Windows Vista should automatically detect the new device and install a built-in driver to support it. The device should then run immediately without any problems. Well, that's the idea, but it doesn't always work out that way. The success of an automatic detection and installation depends on the device being Plug and Play compatible and a device driver being available.
Windows Vista includes many device drivers in a standard installation, and in this case, the device should be installed automatically. If driver updating is allowed through Windows Update, Windows Vista checks for drivers automatically using Windows Update either when you connect a new device or when it first detects the device. Because Windows Update does not automatically install device drivers, you'll need to check for available updates to install the driver.
Note: For details on whether to use Windows Update to check for drivers automatically, see the section titled "The Hardware Tab" in Chapter 2, "Managing Windows Vista Systems." As discussed in Chapter 15, Windows Update must be enabled for this feature to work.
Windows Vista might also automatically detect the new device and then start the Driver Software Installation component, which in turn starts the Found New Hardware wizard. In this case, you can complete the installation by following these steps:
Note: If the wizard fails to install the device, there might be a problem with the device itself or the driver, or a conflict with existing hardware. For additional details on adding hardware and troubleshooting, see the "Managing Hardware" section in this chapter.
Once you've successfully installed a device, you'll need to periodically perform maintenance tasks for the device and its drivers. When new drivers for a device are released, you might want to test them in a development or support environment to see whether the drivers resolve problems that users have been experiencing. If the drivers install without problems and resolve outstanding issues, you might then want to install the updated drivers on computers that use this device. The driver update procedure should be implemented as follows:
Reprinted with permission from Microsoft Press.
30 May 2007