Windows Vista has excellent support for most newer
devices, and most major hardware vendors have taken steps to update
their devices and drivers to run properly with Windows Vista. If you use
only recent, Plug and Play–compliant devices that qualify for the
Designed for Windows Vista logo, you should have a trouble-free
computing experience (at least from a hardware perspective). Of course,
putting trouble-free and computing
next to each other is just asking for trouble. Hardware is not
foolproof; far from it. Things still can, and will, go wrong, and, when
they do, you’ll need to perform some kind of troubleshooting. (Assuming,
of course, that the device doesn’t have a physical fault that requires a
trip to the repair shop.) Fortunately, Windows Vista also has some
handy tools to help you both identify and rectify hardware ills.
Troubleshooting with Device Manager
Device Manager not
only provides you with a comprehensive summary of your system’s hardware
data, it also doubles as a decent troubleshooting tool. To see what I
mean, check out the Device Manager tab shown in Figure 1.
See how the icon for the Atheros AR5006X Wireless Network Adapter
device has an exclamation mark superimposed on it? This tells you that
there’s a problem with the device.
If you examine the device’s properties, as shown in Figure 2, the Device Status area tells you a bit more about what’s wrong. As you can see in Figure 17.9,
the problem here is that the device won’t start. Either try Device
Manager’s suggested remedy or click the Check for Solutions button to
see whether Microsoft has a fix for the problem.
Device Manager uses three different icons to give you an indication of the device’s current status:
A black exclamation mark (!) on a yellow field tells you that there’s a problem with the device.
A red X tells you that the device is disabled or missing.
A
blue i on a white field tells you that the device’s Use Automatic
Settings check box (on the Resources tab) is deactivated and that at
least one of the device’s resources was selected manually. Note that the
device might be working just fine, so this icon doesn’t indicate a
problem. If the device isn’t working properly, however, the manual
setting might be the cause. (For example, the device might have a DIP
switch or jumper set to a different resource.)
If
your system flags a device, but you don’t notice any problems, you can
usually get away with just ignoring the flag. I’ve seen lots of systems
that run perfectly well with flagged devices, so this falls under the
“If it ain’t broke…” school of troubleshooting. The danger here is that
tweaking your system to try and get rid of the flag can cause
other—usually more serious—problems.
Troubleshooting Device Driver Problems
Other than problems
with the hardware itself, device drivers are the cause of most device
woes. This is true even if your device doesn’t have one of the problem
icons that I mentioned in the previous section. That is, if you open the
device’s properties sheet, Vista may tell you that the device is
“working properly,” but all that means is that Vista can establish a
simple communications channel with the device. So if your device isn’t
working right, but Vista says otherwise, suspect a driver problem. Here
are a few tips and pointers for correcting device driver problems:
Reinstall the driver—
A driver might be malfunctioning because one or more of its files have
become corrupted. You can usually solve this by reinstalling the driver.
Just in case a disk fault caused the corruption, you should check the
partition where the driver is installed for errors before reinstalling.
Upgrade to a signed driver—
Unsigned drivers are accidents waiting for a place to happen in Windows
Vista, so you should upgrade to a signed driver, if possible. How can
you tell whether an installed driver is unsigned? Open the device’s
properties sheet, and display the Driver tab. Signed driver files
display a name beside the Digital Signer label, whereas unsigned drivers
display Not digitally signed instead.
Disable an unsigned driver—
If an unsigned driver is causing system instability and you can’t
upgrade the driver, try disabling it. In the Driver tab of the device’s
properties sheet, click Disable
Use the Signature Verification Tool—
This program checks your entire system for unsigned drivers. To use it,
press Windows Logo+R (or select Start, All Programs, Accessories, Run)
to open the Run dialog box, type sigverif,
and click OK. In the File Signature Verification window, click Start.
When the verification is complete, the program displays a list of the
unsigned driver files (if any). The results for all the scanned files
are written to the log file Sigverif.txt, which is copied to the %SystemRoot% folder when you close the window that shows the list of unsigned drivers. In the Status column of Sigverif.txt, look for files listed as Not Signed. If you find any, consider upgrading these drivers to signed versions.
Try the manufacturer’s driver supplied with the device—
If the device came with its own driver, try either updating the driver
to the manufacturer’s or running the device’s setup program.
Download the latest driver from the manufacturer— Device
manufacturers often update drivers to fix bugs, add new features, and
tweak performance. Go to the manufacturer’s website to see whether an
updated driver is available. (See “Tips for Downloading Device Drivers,” next.)
Try Windows Update—
The Windows Update website often has updated drivers for downloading.
Select Start, All Programs, Windows Update and let the site scan your
system. Then click the Driver Updates link to see which drivers are
available for your system.
Roll back a driver— If the device stops working properly after you update the driver, try rolling it back to the old driver.
Tips for Downloading Device Drivers
Finding device drivers on
the World Wide Web is an art in itself. I can’t tell you how much of my
life I’ve wasted rooting around manufacturer websites trying to locate a
device driver. Most hardware vendor sites seem to be optimized for
sales rather than service, so although you can purchase, say, a new
printer with just a mouse click or two, downloading a new driver for
that printer can take a frustratingly long time. To help you avoid such
frustration, here are some tips from my hard-won experience:
If the
manufacturer offers different sites for different locations (such as
different countries), always use the company’s “home” site. Most mirror
sites aren’t true mirrors, and (Murphy’s Law still being in effect) it’s
usually the driver you’re looking for that a mirror site is missing.
The
temptation when you first enter a site is to use the search feature to
find what you want. This works only sporadically for drivers, and the
site search engines almost always return marketing or sales material
first.
Instead of
the search engine, look for an area of the site dedicated to driver
downloads. The good sites will have links to areas called Downloads or
Drivers, but it’s far more common to have to go through a Support or
Customer Service area first.
Don’t try to take any shortcuts to where you think
the driver might be hiding. Trudge through each step the site provides.
For example, it’s common to have to select an overall driver category,
and then a device category, and then a line category, and then the
specific model you have. This is tedious, but it almost always gets you
where you want to go.
If
the site is particularly ornery, the preceding method might not lead
you to your device. In that case, try the search engine. Note that
device drivers seem to be particularly poorly indexed, so you might have
to try lots of search text variations. One thing that usually works is
searching for the exact filename. How can you possibly know that? A
method that often works for me is to use Google (www.google.com) or Google Groups (groups.google.com) or some other web search engine to search for your driver. Chances are someone else has looked for your file and will have the filename (or, if you’re really lucky, a direct link to the driver on the manufacturer’s site).
When
you get to the device’s download page, be careful which file you
choose. Make sure that it’s a Vista driver, and make sure that you’re
not downloading a utility program or some other nondriver file.
When
you finally get to download the file, be sure to save it to your
computer rather than opening it. If you reformat your system or move the
device to another computer, you’ll be glad you have a local copy of the
driver so that you don’t have to wrestle with the whole download
rigmarole all over again.
Troubleshooting Resource Conflicts
On modern computer
systems that support the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface
(ACPI), use PCI cards, and external Plug and Play–compliant devices,
resource conflicts have become almost nonexistent. That’s because the
ACPI is capable of managing the system’s resources to avoid conflicts.
For example, if a system doesn’t have enough IRQ lines, ACPI will assign
two or more devices to the same IRQ line and manage the devices so that
they can share the line without conflicting with each other. (To see
which devices share an IRQ line, activate Device Manager’s View,
Resources by Connection command, and then double-click the Interrupt
Request (IRQ) item.)
ACPI’s success
at allocating and managing resources is such that Windows Vista doesn’t
allow you to change a device’s resources, even if you’d want to do such a
thing. If you open a device’s properties sheet and display the
Resources tab, you’ll see that none of the settings can be changed.
If you use legacy
devices in your system, however, conflicts could arise because Windows
Vista is unable to manage the device’s resources properly. If that
happens, Device Manager will let you know there’s a problem. To solve
it, first display the Resources tab on the device’s properties sheet.
The Resource Settings list shows you the resource type on the left and
the resource setting on the right. If you suspect that the device has a
resource conflict, check the Conflicting Device List box to see whether
it lists any devices. If the list displays only No conflicts, the device’s resources aren’t conflicting with another device.
If there is a conflict,
you need to change the appropriate resource. Some devices have multiple
configurations, so one easy way to change resources is to select a
different configuration. To try this, deactivate the Use Automatic
Settings check box and then use the Setting Based On drop-down list to
select a different configuration. Otherwise, you need to play around
with the resource settings by hand. Here are the steps to follow to
change a resource setting:
1. | In the Resource Type list, select the resource you want to change.
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2. | Deactivate the Use Automatic Settings check box, if it’s activated.
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3. | For
the setting you want to change, either double-click it or select it and
then click the Change Setting button. (If Windows Vista tells you that
you can’t modify the resources in this configuration, select a different
configuration from the Setting Based On list.) A dialog box appears
that enables you to edit the resource setting.
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4. | Use
the Value spin box to select a different resource. Watch the Conflict
Information group to make sure that your new setting doesn’t step on the
toes of an existing setting.
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5. | Click OK to return to the Resources tab.
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6. | Click OK. If Windows Vista asks whether you want to restart your computer, click Yes.
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Tip
An easy way to see which
devices are either sharing resources or are conflicting is via the
System Information utility. Select Start, Run, type msinfo32,
and click OK. (Alternatively, select Start, All Programs, Accessories,
System Tools, System Information.) Open the Hardware Resources branch
and then click Conflicts/Sharing.
