Friday, March 25, 2011

How To Install And Uninstall Windows Drivers

The installation and un-installation process is not very difficult and won’t require any experience or specific knowledge. Once you’ve done it, you can install other drivers on the basis that if you can do it once, you can do it again.

Let’s try to install an updated device driver.

First of all if you have downloaded it as a .zip file, it needs to be extracted from there before you can install it. Then you will see an .exe (executable) file. If you have downloaded just a single .exe file you don’t have to do anything else, just double click on it to start running the installation wizard. If you follow the information message the installation will take you only few seconds.

Or there is another way to update a driver, you can do it manually.

After downloading the driver you need go to Device Manager (in Control Panel), choose the category of hardware you need and then choose the device you want to update the driver for. Right click on the device and go to “Properties”. On your screen will appear a box with a number of tabs, you need to select the Driver tab. Then you will see the button “Update Driver”, that’s exactly what you needed, just click on that and the wizard will start running. Afterwards choose the option Install from a list or specific location (Advanced). On the next message press the button “Don’t search. I will choose the driver to install” and on the next window click “Have disc” button. Then start browsing your computer for the location of the disc or the file which contains the driver you are installing

In the list of files you are allowed to set up you will see files with the extension .inf. An INF (Setup Information File) contains plain text and includes the information about the driver update found in the directory. In case there are no .inf files on display try to download the driver once again, because it might be that there is a problem with a damaged file.

Then just click “ok” and when you will be offered the option to choose hardware on the next window just find yours and press the “next” button.

If you will see a warning message about the driver not being compatible with your hardware, press “yes” and finish the installation process.

After finishing you might have to restart your computer but it’s not always necessary, it depends on the driver.

The Operating System Windows 7 might bring you some troubles during the installation process. The thing is that when installing on to your PC, all drivers and system files need to be verified. But there is a way to sort it out. First generate your own self-signed digital certificate (OpenSSL will be helpful in with this), then install it onto your system’s Windows as a trusted publisher. Afterwards you can use the Microsoft's Authenticode signing tool to sign the driver packages. After doing this the installation will continue without the OS presenting you with verification messages.

If you will need to un-install the driver you can easily do this too. There are two ways to do it.

The first way is just go to the Control Panel and “Add and remove programs” and find the driver you want to un-install. Click on “Remove” and the driver will be deleted completely with all traces.

The second way is just as simple, go in to Device Manager (for how to bring up this window see in the step by step guide above) then right click on the device that you need to un-install the driver for and choose the “Properties” button. In the tab labeled “Driver” click the button “Uninstall”. That’s done, your driver is removed.
http://www.bravofiles.com/  is a place for free driver downloads.

Andy G
 
 
Andy is a guest writer and operates Bravofiles a free website for drivers and software utilities. I recommend adding a link to his site in your bookmarks, it's a great site.
Dan
 

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