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Testimonials Device Drivers TutorialAny OS must possess the ability to interact with physical devices, such as network cards, disks, and video interfaces. The OS must, for instance, request a file from disk on behalf of the user. This requires subsystem-specific function calls that make the request, wait for the disk's response, then pass the results to the user.This is where driver files, often referred to as "device drivers," come in. These executable files provide the interface between the OS and the physical hardware subsystem. In some cases, such as serial interfaces, keyboards, and mouse hardware, drivers are often very generic. This means one will work with nearly any device of a given type (for instance, any PS/2 style mouse can generally use the same driver). In other cases, such as video and network cards (NICs), the device driver is specific to a certain manufacturer and model. The drivers that work with an NVIDIA 7200 series chip set, for instance, may not work or will operate only in a very generic manner when used with a video card manufactured by another vendor (such as Diamond or Hercules). Drivers provide a component of the "hardware abstraction" present in modern operating systems. They're what allow us to create PCs and other systems that mix and match components from multiple vendors. In older minicomputer systems and even early IBM PCs, the hardware was fixed and interacted directly with the OS. Often this meant only one program at a time could make use of a given component, since each program exercised direct control over that hardware. With drivers and hardware abstraction, multiple applications can make (nearly) simultaneous use of the same physical piece of hardware. The OS manages access to the hardware, allowing each program a turn at the device every few microseconds. If you're having problems with a particular device, check the compatibility of the installed driver against the list of supported versions. Sometimes upgrading a driver file can make all the difference in the world in terms of system stability and performance. You can try this tool which will do all of the driver downloading and updating for you! Driver-Specific Information AC97 Drivers | Acer Drivers | ASIO Drivers | ASUS Drivers | Atheros Drivers | ATI Drivers | ATI Radeon Drivers | Audigy Drivers | Audio Drivers | Belkin Drivers | Bluetooth Drivers | Broadcom Drivers | Brother Drivers | Bus Drivers | Canon Drivers | Compaq Drivers | Creative Drivers | D-Link Drivers | eMachine Drivers | Ethernet Controller Drivers | Gateway Drivers | GeForce Drivers | HP Drivers | Intel Drivers | Keyboard Drivers | Legacy Audio Drivers | Linksys Drivers | Logitech Drivers | Microsoft Drivers | Modem Drivers | Monitor Drivers | Motherboard Drivers | Mouse Drivers | MSI Drivers | Multimedia Audio Controller Drivers | NETGEAR Drivers | Network Card Drivers | PCI Drivers | Printer Drivers | Radeon Drivers | RAID Drivers | RAZR Drivers | Realtek Drivers | Router Drivers | Samsung Drivers | SATA Drivers | Scanner Drivers | SigmaTel Drivers | Sound Blaster Drivers | SoundMax Drivers | Toshiba Drivers | TWAIN Drivers | USB Drivers | VGA Drivers | VIA Drivers | Video Card Drivers | Webcam Drivers |
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