What is the purpose of a device driver?

Question

Have you ever had to install a device driver when connecting a new peripheral device to a computer? If you did, what was the device? Was the driver supplied by the operating system or by the device’s manufacturer? Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

a driver "communicates" between the OS and the device. It's common to need to install drivers for hardware such as printers. Sometimes the OS can read the device enough to know what it basically is and provide a "generic" driver for it, but the device won't work as well or have all of its features available. (i.e. you have an HP printer with photo printing capabilities, Windows may be able to supply a driver for it to print off a basic document but not a photo.)

For some devices, like mice and keyboards the OS's drivers are perfectly fine. Wifi cards on the other hand need a driver from the manufacturer.

Windows has a very basic vga (display) driver included with it. If you've ever booted into Windows Safe Mode and seen what it looks like it's because it's using that basic driver for the display (nothing fancy).

Answer 2

In basic terms, the purpose of a device driver is to tell your operating system how to use, control the device.

Yes, new devices require a device driver. Typically a lot of drivers come bundled with the Operating system and you can let your OS search for the best driver. However if you have a disk for the device, you can use the "have disk" option to install the driver that the vendor provided.

Answer 3

The device driver is a small software program that tells the computer how to utilize a device.

Most drivers, for printers, monitors, keyboards,mice, etc. are included in the Windows operating sytem.
They are 'plug and play'. Widows recognizes the device and automatically installs the proper driver.

Some peripheral devices come with a cd that includes the drivers.

Answer 4

A Device driver connects the computer with the specific device. It is a software which helps in communication between the computer and the device. Suppose you are having a computer and a printer connected with wires and power cable. Just think how they will communicate? Device driver is a software which forms a link between the device and the computer. Hence the computer is able to send and receive messages and requests to the device and from the device

Answer 5

All devices connected to a Windows computer need a device driver. Either that driver is provided by Windows automatically, or loaded by you from a floppy disk or CD that came with the device. A device driver tells windows what kind of device you have so it operates correctly.

Answer 6

A device driver is sort of like an expert assistant. It acts as a translator so the processor can talk to a specific device out there. That is all it is. Nothing complicated. Windoze has included many that are commonly used for things like printers, various kinds of CDROM drives and such. Some devices, like my little portable MP3 player, are not covered by the ones which come with Windoze, so I had to load one specific for the player. For my player, it was only applicable to Windoze 98 as the driver was covered with newer versions of Windoze.

Answer 7

Uhmm.....in order, yes, all the parts - build my own computers, sometimes - it could either....
As for the purpose, Device Drivers are like instruction manuals for the computer's OS to know how to properly communicate with the new peripheral. It's like carrying a English/Chinese dictionary while in China.

Answer 8

In basic laymen terms. A driver is a small set of instructions that tells an operating system what a piece of hardware is and how to use it.