Windows Vista Install : Device Manager

Post Setup Tasks | Windows Easy Transfer

Now the configuration of Windows Vista is about to finish, after the very first step is to check out the hardware driver situation. All the hardware connected to PC has been detected ideally, and already the Setup has installed drivers for each of them.

To check out it one need to open a tool called Device Manager and the quickest way to open it is the Start Menu, right click Computer, and then choose Manage. After that the Computer Management window to appear as shown in the image below with tree view on the left, choose device you want to check out.

In the Device Manager tree view if the entries, or nodes, are open, displaying a small yellow exclamation point with a device, or bang, then surely one has to install some drivers. And in Windows Vista there are following four basic ways to install drivers:

• Automatically install the drivers :

  Right click the unsupported device and select Update Driver Software. After Windows will search the local system, including any setup disks, and try to find the appropriate driver. This method never works out but worth trying.

• Manually install the drivers :

  Before right clicking the unsupported device, select Update Driver Software. One need to supply the driver files via a setup disk or other means.

• As an executable setup disk or download :

  Many drivers come in executables along setup routine, so if possible make sure to use a Windows Vista compatible setup application. as this will work fine. Windows XP drivers often work well with Windows Vista.

• With Windows Update :

  It is the best way to install drivers, if you found that Vista Setup did not installed all of the hardware on your system. The hardware drivers on Windows Update are not up to date compared to those supplied directly from the hardware manufacturers.

  Windows Update based drivers have been tested extensively and so one may give them first priority while installing it. Vista will connect to Windows Update automatically, if one has a configured network adapter, grabbing any device drivers it can, within some time after booting into the desktop for the very first time.

To find drivers on Windows Update, open the Start Menu and choose All Programs. Windows Update. Then, click the Check for updates link in the upper right corner of the Windows Update application, as shown in the image below.