What Is a Device Driver?

A device driver is a small piece of software that tells the operating system and other software how to communicate with a piece of hardware.

For example, printer drivers tell the operating system, and by extension whatever program you have the thing you want to print open in, exactly how to print information on the page

Cards and Drivers

Sound card drivers are necessary so your operating system knows exactly how to translate the 1s and 0s that comprise that MP3 file into audio signals that the sound card can output to your headphones or speakers.

The same general idea applies to video cards, keyboards, monitors, mice, disc drives, etc.

Keep reading for more on why drivers are important, including some more examples, as well as information on how to keep your drivers updated and what to do if they're not working properly.

How Do Device Drivers Work?

Think of device drivers like translators between a program you're using and a device that program wants to utilize somehow. The software and the hardware were created by different people or companies and speak two completely different languages, so a translator (the driver) allows them to communicate.

In other words, a software program can provide information to a driver to explain what it wants a piece of hardware to do, information the device driver understands and then can fulfill with the hardware.

Device Drivers and Compatibility

Thanks to device drivers, most software programs don't need to know how to work directly with hardware, and a driver doesn't need to include a full application experience for users to interact with. Instead, the program and driver simply need to know how to interface with each other.

This is a pretty good deal for everyone involved, considering that there is a nearly endless supply of software and hardware out there. If everyone had to know how to communicate with everyone else, the process of making software and hardware would be near impossible.

How to Manage Device Drivers

The drivers for each piece of hardware in your Windows computer are centrally managed from Device Manager, available in all versions of Microsoft Windows.

Most of the time, drivers install automatically and never need more attention, aside from the occasional updating to fix bugs or add a cool new feature. This is true for some drivers in Windows that are downloaded via Windows Update.

When a manufacturer releases a driver update, it's your responsibility to install it. Some companies provide programs that will check for and install any relevant updates, like when updating Nvidia drivers, but most don't make it that easy.

Fortunately, there are free driver updater programs that serve the same purpose, and work with all types of drivers. Some will even check for updates automatically and download and install them for you, much like Windows Update.

Common Driver Tasks

Here are some common tasks in Windows involving drivers:

• How to Update Drivers in Windows
• How to Find a Driver's Version Number in Windows
• How to Roll Back a Driver in Windows

Here are a few additional resources related to drivers:

• Windows 10 Drivers (Updated Listing)
• Windows 8 Drivers (Updated Listing)
• Windows 7 Drivers (Updated Listing)
• How to Find and Download Drivers From Manufacturer Websites
• Popular Driver Download Websites
• Motherboard Drivers: What They Are and How to Identify Them
• Latest NVIDIA GeForce Video Card Drivers
• Latest AMD Radeon Video Card Drivers
• How to Determine If You're Running a 32-bit or 64-bit Version of Windows

Many problems that can be isolated to a particular piece of hardware aren't problems with the actual hardware itself, but issues with the device drivers that are installed for that hardware. Some of the resources linked above should help you figure all that out.

When a Device Driver Is or Isn't Necessary

Beyond the basic software-driver-hardware relationship, there are some other situations that involve drivers (and that don't) that are kind of interesting.

While this is less common these days, some software is able to communicate directly with some types of hardware—no drivers necessary! This is usually only possible when the software is sending very simple commands to the hardware, or when both were developed by the same company, but this can also be thought of as a kind of built-in driver situation.

When to Update Drivers

It's common to wonder if you should update every driver that's available. For example, if your computer, the hardware manufacturer's website, or a driver updater tool tells you that there are 10 driver updates compatible with your system, should you get all of them or just a few? Does it matter which ones you install?

The short answer is no, you don't necessarily need to install every driver update suggested to you. There are two basic scenarios where you might consider installing a new driver:

• If the hardware doesn't work.
• If you want new features.

For example, if after running Driver Booster, it tells you there are several drivers you can install, it might be tempting to get all of them so that you're for sure caught up with all the latest drivers. But each installation increases the risk of a software conflict or other issue that could render the device unusable.

It's best to stick to updating a device driver only if it's currently not working. If you installed a printer, but your computer won't communicate with it, getting the correct printer driver can only improve the situation—i.e., it'll finally let you print. But if the printer was working fine before, and you update the driver just because you want to, there's a chance it won't work any longer, and you will have gained essentially nothing even if it did install correctly.

The other reason, of course, is if you want to get the most out of the device, and the only way to get the latest features is to install the most up-to-date driver.

Different Types of Device Drivers

Some drivers communicate directly with a device, but others are layered together. In these situations, a program will communicate with one driver before that driver communicates with yet another one, and so on until the last driver actually performs the direct communication with the hardware.

These "middle" drivers often don't perform any function at all other than verifying that the other drivers are working properly. Regardless, whether there is one driver or multiples working in a "stack," all of it is done in the background without you having to know, or do, anything.

.SYS Files

Windows uses .SYS files as loadable device drivers, meaning they can be loaded on an as-needed basis so they're not always taking up memory—other drivers are in the DLL or EXE format. The same is true for Linux .KO (kernel) modules.

WHQL

WHQL is a testing process by Microsoft that helps prove that a particular device driver will work with a specific version of Windows. You might see that a driver you're downloading is or isn't WHQL certified. See What Is Windows Hardware Quality Labs? to learn more about this.

Virtual Device Drivers

Another form of the driver is the virtual device driver. These usually end in the VXD file extension and are used with virtualization software. They work similar to regular drivers but in order to prevent the guest operating system from accessing hardware directly, the virtual drivers masquerade as real hardware so the guest OS and its own drivers can access hardware much like non-virtual operating systems.

In other words, while a host operating system and its drivers interface with actual hardware components, virtual guest operating systems and their drivers interface with virtual hardware through virtual device drivers, which are then relayed to the real, physical hardware by the host operating system.