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Where and How to Download Drivers and Utilities?

How to Download, Install and Use Drivers or Utilities

Drivers occupy a unique place in people’s lives. It’s often easy to forget just what the home computing market was like before they became mainstream. there was actually a point where people needed to essentially section off afternoons or even a precious part of their weekend to get hardware working. Today people are usually surprised if hardware isn’t working the instant it’s plugged in.

The fact that people can reasonably make these assumptions is rather amazing. Not because of anything wrong with making assumptions. But because of the fact that things go right often enough to allow people to do so. It shows that computers have become amazingly streamlined over the years. However, this can lead to a problem. The fact that people so seldom need to work with computer drivers means that they’re often confused when that time actually comes.

It doesn’t help that if there is a problem with drivers than it’s typically because the underlying hardware is more complex than average. For example, consider the case of someone updating their motherboard. A motherboard can be thought of as the basic hub that most computers will be hooked up to. This is actually one of the holdouts of the older style of drivers. In the heart of a motherboard is a tiny bit of memory which holds something called a BIOS. BIOS stands for basic input/output system. One can usually find a BIOS upgrade on the motherboard manufacturer’s site. But one should only ever update it if absolutely necessary. The BIOS is essentially what tells a computer how to handle hardware needed to boot. As such it’s one of the few areas which, if incorrectly upgraded, could lock one out of the computer as a whole.

What’s far more common is that one will deal with motherboard drivers from within Windows. It’s true that motherboards are among the most complex pieces of hardware that one will usually deal with. But at the same time this makes it the perfect example of how to update drivers for almost anything on one’s system. The process usually begins by looking on a manufacturer’s website. As an example, one should consider the case of a user trying to install asus z390 drivers. His Asus z390 motherboard has quite a bit of on board hardware. And much of it provides a high level of performance which will need extra drivers to get the most out of.

That’s why the installation for Asus z390 drivers begins on the manufacturer’s website. One can sometimes rely on Windows updates for hardware drivers. It’s simply a matter of bringing up Windows Update from one’s control panel. From there one would simply click “Check for updates”. However, this typically only works for less complex hardware. Something like a motherboard will require that one actually go to the website.

One should then decompress the downloaded driver package. It will usually just come in a zip file. But sometimes the drivers will come as an executable self-extracting zip. One can either double click on such a file to extract the contents or do so with one’s favored compression software. If the resulting files have the dll extension then one should install them from the operating system’s Hardware manager. Simply bring it up, find hardware with a question mark, and right click on it before selecting “Update drivers”

But in the case of Asus motherboard drivers it will usually come in the form of an actual installer. After extracting the downloaded package one would simply double click the installer program. It will handle almost everything from that point. Though no matter how one installed these elements it’s always a good idea to remember to reboot the computer afterward.

 

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