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Troubleshooting 121
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: Your 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
Start
, and then right-click
Computer
.
2
Click
Properties
, and then click
Device Manager
.
NOTE: The User Account Control window may appear. If you are an
administrator on the computer, click Continue; otherwise, contact your
administrator to continue.
Scroll down the list of devices and check for an exclamation point (a circle with
a [
!]
) next to the device name
. 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 122).