Should you download drivers for laptop?

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Edge Shopping Features. Spotify Lyrics. Windows 11 Mute Keyboard Shortcut. Edge Buy Now Pay Later. Windows 10 November Update. Apple Self Service Repair. All Topics. Feature Requests. Sort by. Topics details. GeForce Graphics Cards. By Recency Recency Votes Hot. Filters 2. Mark as read. I have a little problem, mi graphic card is a gtx series. When you download a driver, you must ensure the following:. Before we discuss in detail what you must do when you download device drivers, let us first take a look at the different situations in which you may need to download a driver.

You need to download PC drivers if:. Different versions of a hardware device require different drivers. Therefore, before you begin downloading, it is important that you are aware of the model number of your hardware device.

Directly from Windows : Windows' generic drivers are usually the bare minimum of what you need for something to work.

It isn't ideal for most things, but in some cases—like printers—that's exactly what you want. If you visit your printer's web site, they'll only offer you a driver that includes a bunch of software that may include other features, but not necessarily ones you'll use.

Regular printing and scanning is already built right into Windows, and you don't need photo editors, cloud services, and other junk bloating up your machine. So instead of getting drivers from the manufacturer, just get them right from Windows as described below. From the CD that came with your device : You'll almost never want to do this.

These drivers are probably outdated by the time you get the computer up and running, so you should download the drivers from one of the above sources instead. The only exception: ethernet drivers, if Windows doesn't have them built-in. Obviously if you start up your computer and can't access the internet, you can't download drivers. So install the ethernet drivers from the CD, connect to the internet, and download all your other drivers online.

How to Update Your Drivers When it comes time to update, the process is very simple. If you are having a problem with a particular device, you can quickly upgrade to a newer version by opening Device Manager, right-clicking on the device, and choosing Update Driver Software. This will pop up a wizard that lets you either search Windows Update or your PC for the latest drivers—or you can manually install the drivers by using the Browse option. If it fixes your problem, great—if not, you can always roll back the driver.

If you happen to find a driver perhaps for a device that is giving you an error that is in a zip file, you can use the wizard screen above and choose the Browse option. This will show a window like this, where you can specify the folder that you unzipped the drivers to.

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