Dealing With Windows XP Driver Errors

If your Windows XP drivers are corrupt or out of date you could experience a wide variety of errors. You could get a black screen when playing games or weird textures in games; you could experience no sound; your printer could start printing gibberish; or your USB devices could stop being recognized. The fix for corrupt or out of date drivers is to update the drivers. In this piece I will take you through the steps needed to update your Windows XP drivers.

How to Manually Update Your Windows XP Drivers

The first thing you need to do is figure out what drivers you need: sound? video? USB? Then you need to go into Device Manager and write down the make and model so you can get the right drivers.

 

To get to Device Manager follow these steps:

1. Go to Start
2. Click Settings
3. Click on Control Panel
4. Now double click Systems
5. Now click on the Hardware tab
6. Now click on the Device Manager button

Now that you are in Device Manager, go to the device you are having issue with and get the make and model info. The next step is to go to the manufacturer's web page and find the drivers matching your device. Download the drivers, making a note of where you saved them, and then if the file isn't an exe file then you can update the driver through Device Manager. If it is an exe file, just double click to begin the update. 

Follow these steps to update the device through Device Manager: 

1. Open the drop down to get to the device you are updating the drivers for
2. Right click on the device and click Properties
3. Select the Driver tab
4. Click Update Driver
5. A window will pop up asking “Can Windows connect to Windows Update to search for software?” choose “No, not this time” then click Next
6. Next you'll get a “What do you want Wizard to do?” question. You want to choose “Install from a list or specific location (Advanced)” then click Next
7. Now you should have a “Please choose your search and installation options” window. Choose “Don't search. I will choose the driver to install,” then click Next
8. Click Have Disk
9. Click Browse
10. Navigate to where you saved the drivers and select the file the drivers are in
11. Click OK
12. You should be back at the “Select the device driver you want to install for this hardware” window. Click Next.

Congratulations you have just updated your Windows XP drivers. 

Updating Your Windows XP Drivers Automatically

 

There is software, called driver update software, which will determine if any of your drivers are out of date or corrupt, then go to the manufacturer's web page, download the drivers, and install the drivers for you. All with only a few clicks of the mouse. It only takes a couple minutes to complete the process and it greatly decreases the hassle of updating your Windows XP drivers. Update your Windows XP drivers today.