How to repair driver conflicts

How to repair driver conflicts 

A device driver is a program that helps your devices (hardware such as printers, scanners, digital cameras, disc drives, etc.) communicate with your operating system. The more hardware you have, the more drivers you will have talking' at once. With all of this going on, sometimes drivers conflicts can develop between one or more drivers and the operating system. This does not mean that you cannot use these devices together on your computer. It just means that your computer is having a hard time figuring out how to make everything work in coordination with everything else, and the drivers are how this can happen. Repairing a driver conflict should fix the problem so that your PC works like new. Often, driver conflicts happen because one or more of your drivers are out of date. If you notice a problem (devices not working, system not working) immediately after installing software for a new device, chances are this device is the culprit. If a driver problem develops when there is no new device, it probably means that one of your drivers is out of date and is not up to speed with the rest of the computer. There are three ways to fix this.

1. Visit the website of the company that manufactures the hardware in question and download the most recent driver for your device and operating system. Restart your computer and see if this works.

2. If that isn't fruitful, you can delete the driver manually. To access the device manager:

* using Vista: Start > Control Panel > System and Maintenance > Device Manager

*using XP: Start > Control Panel > Performance and Maintenance > System > Hardware > Device Manager Inside the Device Manager, double click the icon of the device, select the Driver tab, and click on Uninstall. Restart your PC, and then re-install the original driver by using the CD that came with your device.

3. If neither of these works, you can return to the system configuration that was functioning before the problem developed. This can be done by using the Windows roll back tool, called System Restore.