Drivers

I hate installing printer drivers. For one thing, there is no standardization, each one seems to present a new option, question or issue. Then, there is all that extra software that comes with printer drivers, installing just the driver can be quite a battle.

So, when I had to print something recently and the only available printer was a Canon Bubble Jet model i320 that my laptop hadn't seen before, I cringed. Sure enough, it didn't go well.

At Canon's website, finding the Support section with drivers and downloads was easy, as was clicking on "Americas&… Read more

Driver Magician Lite lacks frills and showmanship, but the simple layout makes backing up device drivers much easier than pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

… Read more

TimeDriver is a service for appointment management. I have a deep interest in this category of apps, since coordinating the scheduling of demos and interviews is one of the least pleasant parts of my job. In the good old days, I had an assistant for this.

TimeDriver lets its users set up a "schedule now" button on their Web site or in e-mails. Pressing the button lets the other party see only the times that the user has made available, and it makes sure appointments are not double-booked. It coordinates the user's available times with his or … Read more

My 3-year-old Hewlett-Packard PC stopped playing optical discs a couple of months ago. Not only were the built-in DVD and CD-ROM drives out of commission, I couldn't even get a brand-new external DVD drive to work. I searched and searched for driver updates, but came up empty. It wasn't until I happened upon a Registry patch on Chris Pirillo's great Lockergnome site that I got the machine to recognize the optical drives.

The patch was provided by a volunteer who had no affiliation with HP, Microsoft, or the drive vendors. It's not uncommon for PC experts … Read more

The first part of this posting on dealing with software crashes covered preventing the leakage of personal information, portable applications, and controlling the programs that run automatically when Windows starts up. Here we look at dumps, event logs, and disk checking, but first, we pick up on the topic of drivers.

Driver Verifier

In Windows, the term "driver" refers to software used by the operating system to control the hardware in the computer. Each piece of hardware (sound, video, printer) has an associated driver program.

The last topic in the previous posting was an airplane analogy to illustrate … Read more

Software crashes all too often, and since misery loves company, computer users often swap horror stories. Back on Halloween, Lee Gomes did so publicly in the Wall Street Journal. His problem was with the Adobe Premiere Pro, a video editing program and, while I found it interesting, the article didn't offer advice for avoiding or dealing with software crashes. That's what I hope to do here. First though, defending your privacy.

ERROR REPORTING

When applications crash, a window often pops up asking if you want to report the problem to Microsoft. Gomes writes that the Microsoft employees who … Read more

Sometimes calling tech support can be a real pain--like when you can't get a hard-to-obtain printer that was just reported stolen to work for you.

That's apparently the experience of Timothy Scott Short, who was arrested earlier this month after allegedly stealing a computer and printer used for producing driver's licenses and then calling Digimarc's tech support line a couple of times seeking software for the same model printer, according to a report from IDG. Short was charged with felony possession of "document-making implements" in connection with the October 5 theft of a PC … Read more

A great tool for when you're mucking about with reinstalling an operating system or just want to have several fail safes going is DriverMax, which backs up your drivers one at a time, a few at a time, or all at once. From registration to implementation, DriverMax works fast, runs smooth, and even does more than mere safe-checking.

… Read more

Here's some welcome news from Novell: it is paying for an engineer's time to write free (as in cost) open-source (as in transparency and freedom) Linux device drivers for those who release the hardware specs of their devices. From the developer's blog:

Yes, that's right, the Linux kernel community is offering all companies free Linux driver development. No longer do you have to suffer through all of the different examples in the Linux Device Driver Kit, or pick through the thousands of example drivers in the Linux kernel source tree trying to determine which one is the closest to what you need to do.… Read more