All About Device Drivers

What Is a Device Driver?

A device driver is software that helps a piece of hardware interact with the operating system and other software applications on the computer. Basically, a device driver reduces the instructions issued by a high level application to a more readable low level format for the hardware device.

Device drivers are highly dependent on the operating system in question and the hardware device it is associated with. Users issue commands in high level languages asking the device to perform a particular activity. It is then the device driver’s job to translate this into a readable form and transfer the instructions to the specific device.

Every device driver is identified by its device ID, which is the version of the device and its identifier and the vendor ID that effectively identifies its vendor.

What Are the Basic Functions of a Device Driver?

A device driver contains code and various functions that help it convert or translate the instructions it receives from the operating system or from other high-end applications to a form that the hardware the driver is associated with will understand.

There are two basic components of a device driver – the logical part and the physical part. The logical part of the driver is designed by the operating system manufacturer whereas the physical part of the device driver is manufactured by the device vendor.

Logical device drivers interact with a more general class of devices, such as, specific ports on a computer whereas physical drivers are applicable to specific kinds of hardware, for example, a particular printer or a network adaptor.

Another way of classifying device drivers is the kind of input/output they handle. For example, drivers that interact with devices that have physical storage as a component, say external hard drives are called block device drivers. All other device drivers are called character device drivers.

Device Driver Devices

Device drivers are written for almost all hardware, including printers, scanners, video adapters, network and sound cards, local buses, digital cameras and so on.

There is also available a kind of software called a virtual device driver, which is usually utilized in virtualization environment. In this, there is an emulator that emulates the working of a hardware device in a different but virtual environment.

Writing Device Drivers

Writing device drivers for various devices is a job that takes good skill and considerable precision. Errors that arise due to incorrectly designed drivers are quite a few in number. Also, these errors are generally more dangerous than other errors in the sense that they can cause more damage to a system. You must know that device driver errors are one of the prime causes of the blue screen of death errors.

Device Driver Errors and Corrections

Since device driver errors are serious in nature, steps must be taken to prevent these errors to whatever extent possible. Microsoft has developed a framework called the Windows Driver Foundation to minimize the threat poorly written drivers pose.

It is also important that drivers for devices updated on regular basis. This apart from ensuring stability is also essential because at times, device driver manufacturers may add new features that may be required to perform additional functions. Third-party device driver maintenance software, such as Driver Detective do a very good job of helping you in maintaining and updating your PC drivers.

Driver Detective!