OLD DRIVERS CAUSE CRASHES. REPLACE THEM BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE

So there I was with my brand new laptop. As far as I could tell, everything was working right out of the box. Then I began to transfer some of my older computer's files such as my web browser's bookmarks, profiles, documents and other similar types of data. I used one of the more popular utilities to help me speed through this rather laborious process. And after I was done, everything seemed to be working just fine, until I rebooted.

Then bad things began to happen. My Wi-Fi connection wouldn¹t work. I checked every option, tested every connection, nothing. Finally I looked at the Intel driver version and date. It was old. In fact, it was as old as my former laptop's driver because actually it was my former laptop's driver that I had inadvertently copied over to the newer machine. Updating the driver instantly fixed the entire problem. So what's a driver?

A driver is a small piece of software that controls different kinds of hardware on your computer, usually referred to as a device. Every device, whether it be a printer, disk drive, keyboard or even the WiFi hardware inside your laptop must have a driver. Many drivers, such as the keyboard driver come with the operating system. That's a good thing since you'd be hard pressed if your computer's keyboard didn't function so you can be fairly confident that the driver for it is already there. For other devices however, you may need to load a new driver when you connect the device to your computer. Windows comes with a large database of drivers for a wide variety of devices and peripherals but even Microsoft can't be expected to have them all preloaded. That's why most any piece of hardware you plan to attach to your computer comes with a CD that contains the driver for it.

Another good example of how a driver effects hardware is the mouse. Connecting just about any kind of mouse to your computer will see it operate because most generic drivers will at least recognize any mouse's left and right buttons and even the scroll wheel since just about every mouse has one. But if your mouse has several other buttons that give it additional abilities, or lets you assign functions to those buttons, you will most definitely need the specific mouse driver from the company that made the mouse to utilize them. Otherwise it will only work as a standard two-button mouse.

Other devices may not be so forgiving. A device with an older driver may not work at all or work improperly. So having the proper, updated drivers for all of your devices is extremely important. But how can one keep up with the thousands of drivers and be assured that the ones you have are the latest versions?

Driver Agent is a website that can examine all of your computer's device drivers in just a few moments. Just log in and Driver Agent will first locate and then compare the version numbers of all your drivers to its database of well over a hundred thousand device driver updates. After the examination, Driver Agent will display a screen of the drivers it found along with a check list of which ones are current and which ones need updating.

After seeing the results, you can choose to open a Driver Agent subscription. After you're a member, you can instruct Driver Agent to automatically update any driver that needs updating, all from the Driver Agent website. The decision to update is based on several factors and just not the version number. Factors like the driver date and even reverse compatibility are considered before the update takes place.

Joining Driver Agent requires a one year subscription of $29.95. This fee entitles you to unlimited use for all of your computers. Windows only.

www.driveragent.com

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