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94 Troubleshooting Tools
Drivers
What is a Driver?
A driver is a program that controls a device such as a printer, mouse, or
keyboard. All devices require a driver program.
A driver acts like a translator between the device and any other programs that
use the device. Each device has its own set of specialized commands that only
its driver recognizes.
Dell ships your computer to you with required drivers already installed—no
further installation or configuration is needed.
NOTICE: The Drivers and Utilities media may contain drivers for operating systems
that are not on your computer. Ensure that you are installing software appropriate
for your operating system.
Many drivers, such as the keyboard driver, come with your Microsoft
Windows operating system. You may need to install drivers if you:
• Upgrade your operating system.
• Reinstall your operating system.
• Connect or install a new device.
Identifying Drivers
If you experience a problem with any device, identify whether the driver is the
source of your problem and, if necessary, update the driver.
1
Click the
Start
,
and right-click
Computer
.
2
Click
Properties
→
Device Manager
.
NOTE: The User Account Control (located to the left under Tasks window)
may appear. If you are an administrator on the computer, click Continue;
otherwise, contact your administrator to continue.
Scroll down the list to see if any device has an exclamation point (a yellow
circle with a [!]) on the device icon.
If an exclamation point is next to the device name, you may need to reinstall the
driver or install a new driver (see "Reinstalling Drivers and Utilities
" on page 95
).
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