Once I received a message on my computer that I needed a “driver”. My brother is more savvy than I and he asked “Why do you need that?” He’d never heard of it. So what’s a “driver”?
Well, it turns out that the “driver” in question is a device driver and whether you’re using a Windows computer, a Macintosh or even a Linux system, they’re a critical requirement for the system to work properly. And hopefully the full name “device driver” gives you a solid clue as to what their purpose is on your computer: they act as the glue between the physical devices hooked up to your computer and the operating system itself.
For example, you can plug in a small, old computer monitor and your computer will know how to display information on it properly, without thinking it’s huge. Unplug that, plug in a 37-inch ultra-HD monitor and it’ll know how to deal with that too. All because of the device driver that lets the operating system basically say “figure out the size of the screen” and translates that into a specific hardware request — possibly because of a device driver specific for that monitor or brand of monitors.
Your keyboard, your mouse, the devices you plug into the USB port, your printer, even the DVD drive and the hard disk that lets you store data on your computer, they’re all powered by device drivers.
That’s why sometimes you see this message when you plug in a new device:
Some device drivers are so basic that you don’t need to update them ever: A standard 3-button mouse is going to work just fine, while a more complicated device like a smartwatch, fitness band or similar wearable likely requires its own custom driver that you’ll need to download from the vendor before you plug the device into your computer.
Where this gets really complicated is that different operating systems have a different architecture so a Windows device driver won’t work for a Mac system and a Linux device driver won’t work for either. Now you can start to see the critical task of these drivers and why it’s important to always ensure that they’re updated and that you have the right driver for each and every device you have plugged in too.
Sometimes you can just update Windows and device drivers update too:
Because of these architectural differences, Microsoft Windows systems have the biggest challenge with drivers and they can be quite a house of cards, tricky to manage and yet critical to have updated and configured correctly. One program I recommend for this task is DriverAgent and if you use that link, you’ll find that they have a special offer for Ask Dave Taylor readers too, which is handy!
By the way, Microsoft explains this: “A driver is software that allows your computer to communicate with hardware devices. Without drivers, the devices you connect to your computer—for example, a mouse or external hard drive—won’t work properly. Windows can automatically check if there are drivers available for new devices that you connect to your computer.”
Hope that clears things up for both you and your brother!