The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    what is a driver?

    Discussion in 'Gaming (Software and Graphics Cards)' started by rebarbender, Apr 24, 2007.

  1. rebarbender

    rebarbender Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    2
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    extreme noob question. what is it and what does it do? thanks
     
    rebarbender, Apr 24, 2007
    #1
  2. coriolis

    coriolis Notebook Nobel Laureate

    Reputations:
    2,319
    Messages:
    14,119
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    455
    Think of a driver as knowledge, the hardware as a car, and the OS as a person.

    A person wants to drive a car, but without knowledge(road testing, getting license, etc.), its impossible to drive(theoretically speaking of course hah).

    So pretty much, a driver enables the OS to correctly use the hardware without problems. It also enchances the use, and fixes potential problems.
     
    coriolis, Apr 24, 2007
    #2
  3. obsolete

    obsolete Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    104
    Messages:
    458
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    That's deep coriolis. :p But yeah, the driver is a set of instructions that tells the operating system how to use a particular piece of hardware.
     
    obsolete, Apr 25, 2007
    #3