How to Repair Driver Issues for Windows Hardware Devices

Introduction

If you have any problems with your computer hardware, there is a possibility that the problem is resulted from driver issues since drivers are a type of software that acts as the middleman between your operating system and specific hardware components, such as a printer and monitor. If the driver is down, then the middleman is sick and can't convey the information correctly. That is why your hardware components don't respond.

This article demonstrated several methods that deserve a try to repair driver issues and make hardware working again.

Method 1: Restore Your Computer to a Point before Problems Began

Suppose that you do create a restore point before the problem showed up, you can restore your system to this point.

Start >All Programs >Accessories >System Tools >System Restore
Then follow the on-screen prompts to do the rest.

Note that this will restore all other settings and data in Disk C to the point where you created the restore point. So be careful if you have very important data that can't be erased in C.

Method 2: Uninstall Corrupted/Problematic Driver and Reinstall It

Another common way to fix driver problems is to uninstall and reinstall drivers.

1. Go to Device Manager and pull down the specific device driver.
2. Double click it to open the Properties window.
3. Click Driver tab and choose Uninstall.
4. Reboot after the uninstallation.

Windows will search for the missing driver and try its best to reinstall whatever driver it can. However, sometimes the automatic search and reinstall will fail due to various reasons. In this case, you may download and install specific driver from manufacture's website or use driver download and install tool to automatically do this.

Method 3: Restore Drivers from Backup If You Just Right Made the Backup Before

It is always a good habit to make a backup, either for data, programs or settings, configurations because you never know when accidents will happen and you need the old data/programs.

Windows does not provide us with a built-in option to backup and restore drivers so you need a 3rd party tool to complete this. Try 100% free and easy-to-use tool DriveTheLife.

1. Download, install and launch DriveTheLife.
2. It will start an automatic scan of all drivers without advanced configuration.
3. If you need to backup or fix drivers, just go ahead. All the features of this program is free.
4. Now let's skip all that to backup and restore driver. Go to Manage board and you will see three options: Backup, Restore and Uninstall.

If you have made backup before, just click Restore tab and it will display in the available list to restore.
5. Restart computer and done! 

That's all for what I will demonstrate in this article to fix driver related problems. Updating drivers and rolling backup driver are also methods but they are similar to uninstall/reinstall drivers and restore to restore point so I won't write it here.