Windows XP Home Edition: The Missing Manual

Chapter 14. Hardware

A PC contains several pounds of wires, slots, cards, and chips—enough hardware to open a TruValue store. Fortunately, you don’t have to worry about making all of your PC’s preinstalled components work together. In theory, at least, the PC maker did that part for you. (Unless you built the machine yourself, that is; in that case, best of luck.)

But adding new gear to your computer is another story. Hard drives, cameras, printers, scanners, networking cards, video cards, keyboards, monitors, game controllers, palmtop synchronization cradles, and other accessories can all make life worth living for the power user. When you introduce a new piece of equipment to the PC, you must hook it up and install its driver, the software that lets a new gadget talk to the rest of the PC.

UP TO SPEED About Drivers

When a software program wants to communicate with your gear, Windows is the mediator. For example, when your word processor needs the printer, it says, “Yo, printer! Print this document, will ya?” Windows intercepts the message and gives the printer very specific instructions about printing, ejecting pages, making text bold, and so on. It speaks to the printer in “Printerese,” a language it learns by consulting the printer’s software driver.

Other hardware components work similarly, including sound cards, network interface cards (NICs), modems, scanners, and so on. All of them require specifically formatted instructions and driver software.

Fortunately, Microsoft has taken ...