Updating Drivers

[Devia Eleven]

From what I generally believe, updating drivers permanently benefits whatever type of hardware you choose to install it on. I don't exactly know what drivers actually do, and I've created this thread to get an answer from someone more experienced.

[ken_cinder]

Drivers are the software that "drive" your hardware, without them your hardware and your OS don't know how to communicate with eachother.

If your OS doesn't know how to tell your soundcard to play sound on the rear channel for instance, you won't hear anything.

 

Think of drivers like you would a phone number written on a piece of paper, with instructions to tell the person on the other end. The drivers point other hardware and/or your OS to the hardware in question, and tell it "how" to talk to it.

As for permanently benefiting the hardware, it's just like anything else, there can be errors. Something may be optimized to communicate more efficiently with one part of the hardware, but wind up making things worse with another part. Like any software.

For instance, I can't use the latest drivers for my WiFi cards on either of my PCs, they cause a BSOD.

 

I really don't know how to simplify this, and put it in proper perspective........at least not better than this.

[Devia Eleven]

Thanks for clarifying that part, much obliged.