It never comes with a warning, one day your PC runs like a greyhound and the next you can hear the gears grinding as it struggles to operate properly. Your hardware stops communicating with your PC’s operating system and this is often due to corrupted or missing drivers. This always leads to performance issues and sloppiness all around especially when a new hardware device has been installed.

Maybe things are not that bad on your PC and you don’t actually have a serious performance issue, but new hardware you may have acquired is not performing to your expectations, you may have a conflict, or you may be missing drivers for your new hardware or have outdated ones.

Locating a missing driver is not necessarily the hardest thing to do, depending on your experience and ability. Generally you have some rather common sense options and then some obscure options and when all else fails you can download a driver tool to automatically find updates for you. We’ll cover all possible ways to find missing drivers and get your machine back on the fast lane.

Check the hardware manufacturer’s site for updated drivers

Ok, so you knew this one. Yes it is definitely going to be the best place to start. Typically if you type in the name or model of hardware you purchased from this manufacturer on their site, you’ll get tons of related information about that piece of hardware, including a new version of that darned outdated or missing driver. Most manufacturers, especially the larger corporations, maintain very sophisticated databases of information for customer self help. They certainly don’t want to be answering the phone for everyone who needs a driver, so they’ve gone through the trouble of setting up an area where their customers can find what they need quickly. For Example Dell is one such manufacturer that offers a very convenient self serve portal where all you need to do is insert your system's serial number and their system automatically finds ALL pertaining drivers to that type of system.

Check the CD that came with the PC or hardware

Another duh! Whether you purchased your PC from DELL, HP or your local grocery store, that machine will most likely have arrived to you with a resource/re-install CD which you can always use when you run into this “missing drivers” situation. The resource disk will have all the initial installation software for you to recover should you ever end up having to rebuild your system or with corrupted or missing drivers. Typically after a year or so of having owned your PC, you may manually run updates on your system for various reasons. These may include purchasing new add-on hardware that comes with its own driver, which in turn needs your PC to run certain driver versions at a higher level for it to function properly. So when you have your PC updated to a higher level, the resource CD would be good to get your device at least working to an acceptable level until you can update it again.

Have windows help you with its amazing tool

Finding missing drivers is not what the windows operating system is well known for. It can help though. The Found New Hardware Wizard usually triggers on when a device stops working or when you first connect a seemingly plug-and-play device. Although not the most reliable option, sometimes the wizard will find an built in driver, common now in windows XP and Vista, that can temporarily get your machine to a level where it can work without those missing drivers until you can properly update it. The wizard will commonly sort through drivers for windows or Microsoft certified drivers first if none of those fit the bill, it can in many cases pick generic drivers that can help get your hardware talking again.

Use an automated tool to find missing drivers

Should all these options fail miserably, and often will, your last and in fact easiest option is to download a driver scan software tool that can eliminate the hassle of manually updating drivers. These tools have become life savers for millions of PC users who are not willing to or have the time to look for missing drivers online so they can get back work. Automated PC tools provide effective and reliable functionality to take care of those little mundane tasks that can hurt productivity and frustrate users.

There are a few options when it comes to driver software, not all of them work the same. You have free driver tools that can work fine, but do not have access to the massive driver databases that paid tools do. Another down side of free driver tools is that they typically have not support or guarantees.