You probably need to start an article on the topic “how to install a driver” with what a driver is and why it is needed at all. A driver is a special program that allows your operating system to work with some device. For example, a video card, modem, printer, sound card, network card, and much more. In other words, everything that you connect to your computer will not work until you install a special driver for a specific device.
A little background
Previously, although now there are still such ones, users of the Windows XP operating system (of course, all previous versions of the OS belong to this case) had to manually install each driver. That is why various questions arose about this: “how to install the driver”, “where to get the driver” and others.
Consider the question - "how to install a sound driver?" To do this, you need a disk that was attached to the motherboard. In general, when buying any device in the kit, a driver disk should go.
If you don’t have this disk, for any reason (lost, it wasn’t at the time of purchase or it is damaged, etc.), you will need to determine the exact name of your video card and then download the appropriate driver on the Internet.
If you can’t determine the name, then take some Windows assembly into which enthusiasts have built a set of drivers and programs.
Current situation
Windows 7 developers have solved the problem of many installing drivers. Now, when installing the operating system, the drivers are installed automatically. The system determines which devices are available and installs drivers for them. We are talking about the most basic devices: video card, sound card, network card. Drivers for the modem, printer and other things you have to install yourself.
How to install the driver manually?
There are several ways to install. To begin with, in any case, we need to find a driver. If there is no disk, then download on the Internet. If you do not know the exact name of the device, then install the Everest program . In it you can find out detailed information about your computer as a whole.
After we know the exact model of the device, download the driver. Next, proceed with the installation.
You can start the installation by clicking on the executable exe file. For example, setup.exe.
If you downloaded only the driver, then only it will be installed. But if you use a disk that went in addition to the device, then most likely you will be asked to install any utilities, programs, components, and more.
If you install the driver on a graphics card, you will be prompted to install more DirectX and PhysX.
If you just downloaded only the driver, then you will install only it and nothing more. Everything else will have to be hung separately.
How to install the driver using a file. inf?
You can also install using a special .inf file that stores installation information.
In theory, in order not to worry for a long time with the installation, after downloading the driver, reconnect the device or restart the computer. As soon as the system sees the device without a driver, an installation wizard will immediately appear, with which you can easily install all the necessary files.
It is possible otherwise. Open the properties of your computer. There you need to find the item "Devices" or "Device Manager". We find the right device. Finding it is easy, because when the device does not have a driver, it displays a question mark.
We press the right button on the mouse and in the menu that opens, select the item - "Install the driver" or "Update". Then everything will be simple (using the driver installation wizard).
Follow the instructions of this wizard and you will succeed.
If you can’t install the driver, it means that you downloaded not what you need (for example, for another operating system).