Questions tagged [drivers]

In computing, a device driver or software driver is a computer program allowing higher-level computer programs to interact with a hardware device. A driver typically communicates with the device through the computer bus or communications subsystem to which the hardware connects. When a calling program invokes a routine in the driver, the driver issues commands to the device. Once the device sends data back to the driver, the driver may invoke routines in the original calling program. Drivers are hardware-dependent and operating-system-specific. They usually provide the interrupt handling required for any necessary asynchronous time-dependent hardware interface.

This tag should only be used for questions related to driver development, as questions about finding or installing drivers are off-topic for StackOverflow. Assistance with identifying, locating, and installing drivers may be obtained at SuperUser, Unix & Linux Exchange or in the case of server-related and enterprise-level hardware, ServerFault.

As Microsoft states, Without drivers, the hardware you connect to your computer—for example, a video card or a webcam—will not work properly.

In most cases, drivers come with Windows or can be obtained through Windows Update; other times, the driver is found on the disc that came with the hardware or device you want to use, or is on the manufacturer's website.

People also often cite drivers as a common cause of operating system crashes. The reason a poorly written driver can crash an operating system is if it overwrites memory that is shared in the operating system's address space. This is less common in micro-kernel operating systems than [monolithic kernel] operating systems, where all OS services run along with the main kernel thread, thus also residing in the same memory area.