In computer science, a device driver is essentially a software program that works or controls an electronic device that is connected to the computer or mechanical automaton as described in the computer hardware. In computers, devices that fall under this category are computer peripheral devices such as printers, keyboards, scanners, USB drives, cameras and video game consoles among others. They allow the processing of instructions from the software to the device in order to enable it executes the instruction that have been provided. As such, any computer can have a device driver installed if and only if it is manufactured or designed by specific manufacturers. However, installing the wrong device driver may often lead to errors, stalls in operations and crashes.
To solve this common way to crashes and error messages in your PC, you can simply use the device manager to locate and fix the device drivers on your PC. The device manager is Windows’ device driver manager which allows you to select the hardware that is currently attached to your PC and open or close the associated device. It also allows you to uninstall or install new hardware. This way, device drivers are updated whenever there are new versions of the hardware. For example, if a new printer is to be used but not any printers are plugged in yet, you can search for the device drivers of the printer in device manager, click on the device and uninstall it, or open the device driver software for the said printer to install it.
However, if you want to update the device driver, it is better to search for the updates manually. This is because you may have modified one of the files associated with the device and as such, may not be able to update the device driver. There are two ways to do this: One is to use the command prompt that will prompt you on where to find the updates; and another is to download device update software which can help you search for the updates. These are the two most reliable ways to update your device drivers.