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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.
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
button and click
Control Panel
.
2
Under
Pick a Category
, click
Performance and Maintenance
.
3
Click
System
.
4
In the
System Properties
window, click the
Hardware
tab.
5
Click
Device Manager
.
6
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 the following subsection, "Reinstalling Drivers."
Reinstalling Drivers
NOTICE: The Dell Support website at support.dell.com provides approved drivers for Dell™ computers.
If you install drivers obtained from other sources, your computer might not work correctly.
You can reinstall drivers in the following ways:
• Use Windows XP Device Driver Rollback.
• Reinstall drivers manually.