driver Last modified: Tuesday, November 04, 2003
A program that controls a device. Every device, whether it be a printer, disk drive, or keyboard, must have a driver program. Many drivers, such as the keyboard driver, come with the operating system. For other devices, you may need to load a new driver when you connect the device to your computer. In DOS systems, drivers are files with a.SYS extension. In Windows environments, drivers often have a.DRV extension. A driver acts like a translator between the device and programs that use the device. Each device has its own set of specialized commands that only its driver knows. In contrast, most programs access devices by using generic commands. The driver, therefore, accepts generic commands from a program and then translates them into specialized commands for the device.
Drivers HeadQuarters  The home page of Drivers HeadQuarters provides information on computer hardware drivers including BIOS updates, video adapters and monitors, printers, fax modems, network adapters, and multimedia devices. Windrivers.com - device driver information  A comprehensive resource for information about Windows 3.1, 95 and NT device drivers. Offers searchable categories for companies, products and FCC ID numbers as well as hard drive and memory specifications, and downloadable utilities. Baseband Technologies home page Baseband Technologies specializes in communications driver design development, and offers this page with links to their services and company information. Mister Driver Search engine for all device drivers. The Driver Zone Offers a quick way to find and download a device driver. Links to all the major hardware vendors will take you straight to the driver-download page. Yahoo!'s drivers page Yahoo!'s directory of drivers. Windows 95 Driver Library Simple step-by-step instructions on downloading and installing new drivers for your hardware. This library is hosted by Microsoft and updated on September 22, 1997.

Related Terms

ANSI.SYS ASD Agent CONFIG.SYS controller device ODI safe mode SP virtual device driver WDM

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