Windows Vista Security: Praxisorientierte Sicherheit für Profis

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Chapter 5: Customizing Your Computer’s Hardware Devices

Installing and Managing Hardware

When it comes to installing and managing hardware, Windows Vista is in many

ways much smarter than earlier releases of Windows. As discussed previously, this is

partly because the setup programs for hardware devices have gotten better and partly

because Windows Vista itself has improved. A key new feature in Windows Vista

that makes hardware installation and management easier is hardware diagnostics.

Hardware diagnostics is a part of the top-to-bottom diagnostics framework dis-

cussed in Chapter 21.

Getting Available but Not Configured Hardware to Work

Thanks to hardware diagnostics, Windows Vista automatically detects and tries to

help you resolve issues with hardware components. If you installed Windows Vista

on your computer, you may have found that certain hardware devices weren’t auto-

matically configured during installation. In many cases, hardware diagnostics will

detect available but not configured hardware and then use the automatic update

framework to retrieve required drivers the next time Windows Update runs.

The update process is subject to several caveats. You must enable Windows Update

and configure it to allow retrieval of drivers and driver updates by completing the fol-

lowing steps:

1. Click Start and then click Control Panel.

2. In the Control Panel, click System and Maintenance and then click Windows

Update.

3. In Windows Update, click the Check for Updates link in the Tasks pane.

Figure 5-19. Configuring Internet time

Installing and Managing Hardware

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When drivers become available, you must install them. Windows Update does not

install drivers or driver updates automatically. To install downloaded drivers and

driver updates, follow these steps:

1. Click Start and then click Control Panel.

2. In the Control Panel, click System and Maintenance and then click Windows

Update.

3. In Windows Update, click Check for Updates in the left pane and then click

“View available updates.”

4. On the “View available updates” page, you can review the available updates.

5. Optional updates, such as those for device drivers, may not be selected for instal-

lation automatically. To ensure that an update is installed, select the related

checkbox, as shown in Figure 5-20.

6. When you click Install, Windows Vista will create a restore point prior to install-

ing device drivers. If necessary, you can use this restore point to recover the sys-

tem, as discussed in Chapter 21. Windows Vista will then install the updates.

Once you’ve installed the driver for a device, Windows Vista should both detect the

hardware and install the device automatically. If Windows Vista detects the device

but isn’t able to install the device automatically, it starts the Found New Hardware

Wizard to help you through the installation process. In the Found New Hardware

Wizard, click “Locate and install driver software (recommended)” to continue with

the installation. The Driver Software Installation component will then search for pre-

configured drivers and should find the driver that you’ve just made available to com-

plete the installation.

Figure 5-20. Viewing available updates