5 Ways to Find Software & Drivers for HP Desktop PCs with Windows Vista - Kevin & Randy

Hi. I'm Kevin.
And this is Randy. I am.
And we work for the HP Customer Support web team. We do.
We get a lot of comments from customers asking us how do I find
software drivers for my HP products.
So that's what we're going to do today. We're going to tell you
every way that we know how
to find software and drivers
for HP products.
So Randy.
If you were at home you had this PC what would be the first place you would
go to to get software and drivers?
Me? I would start with HP Update.
It's a software tool that comes on the PC. You go
click Start
All Programs
uh... scroll down to a folder called HP
and then click HP Update.
When you do that and you're connected to the Internet,
the software tool automatically goes,
figures out what's on your system what's not on your system, what's available from
the server
and it gives you a big list of everything that you want,
you know, that's there for you to install.
You can be selective and select just what you want to install or you can
select them all and
and then click Next.
So you don't have to know
which versions you have or which software you need. This goes out and finds
everything that's available for your product.
True. It takes the work out of it for you.
That's why I would go there first. OK. So these are like updates and that the but what
if I needed to reinstall like the original driver, like something happens, my
sound goes out or something like that.
And maybe I'm not connected to the Internet. How would I install
software and drivers then?
OK. There are several things you can do but again if you start with the
tools that come with the PC, probably the first thing I would do if you're not
connected to the Internet there's a
restoration tool that HP provides
which is called HP
Recovery Manager.
You can get to it by, again, through the Start menu.
Start All Programs.
Instead of clicking HP, click PC Help and Tools.
HP puts it in
that folder.
It's called Recovery Manager.
Welcome to Recovery Manager, but I like to go straight to Advanced
Options.
And then you have two selections in here. Reinstall Software Programs that came
with your Computer,
or the Hardware Drive. If you're just trying to get a hardware driver back so you've
lost your sound.
I don't know what to do now. My sound driver's gone.
You'd come in here. Select
Reinstall Hardware Drivers, Click Next.
Click Next again.
And it'll give you a list of everything that's available.
You can come in here and you can find in your list which item we need.
Select it.
Click next and then
go through the screens.
Back
to the way it was.
OK. So.
You've tried Recovery Manager but whatever it is you're looking for wasn't
in there.
Maybe you've
already tried HP Update. Whatever you're looking for was not in there. Maybe
you don't have HP Update or even Recovery Manager on your PC.
What would you do? For me, I'm comfortable downloading software, so I would actually jump right out to the
Internet and go right to HP's website.
We already have it set here, so you'll see HP.com and you come out here to
the page and go to Support and Drivers.
From here you would select the Download Drivers and Software option.
And then you'll get this second step here,
where you need to enter your product model number.
And this here is very important.
Because without your product model number
you may not find that software and driver you're looking for.
So where do you find it? So, for this one, you look on the front. This is a TouchSmart
but it does not say which exact model. It just says TouchSmart,
but that's actually not the model number. That's the type of PC.
So. There's a few places. There's a sticker on the back.
And on the back it'll say model number and it would say whatever the model is that's
very important. Ahh. There's a trick.
Control Alt
S.
So if you have a desktop PC you can do Control--
hold down the Control button, plus Alt and S.
And it pulls up your product information it gives you your model
number right up top. Says model number. Exactly. And this one here happens to be an
IQ 506. So I'm going to come in here, and I'm going to type
IQ 506. And Go.
And this is going to take me to a page that says Select your Operating System. It does.
And from here this is that Windows Vista 64-bit, or regular Windows Vista. You may
in some PCs have
another thing like XP. If you've got an older system you may have Windows 98. 0:04:31.620,0:04:32.520 or ME.
So we know we have a Vista 64-bit
and we would select that.
So from here you've got a listing of all of the drivers and software that HP's
made available.
Probably the next place I would go is probably to Microsoft because
the operating system comes, you know,
if it comes with Windows
then you want to go to Microsoft Windows Update.
OK. So,
to go to a Windows Update and just click Start.
And go to
All Programs.
Right there at the top. Right there.
Windows Update.
Click View Available Updates so you can see exactly similar to HP Update, you know,
you can go through and you can select
what you want or what you don't want. Right.
So choose which ones you want then click the Install button.
OK. So that's Windows Update. It's given you the basic security fixes, things like
that, but what if you're still having trouble work with your sound or
something like that so you know you still need a device driver.
For specific devices I always like to try going to Device Manager first.
You go to Start.
Right-click
on Computer
or if it's XP My Computer, and then selecting Properties from the little window
that pops up.
Right. In Vista you would just click Device Manager. If you're in XP you'll have another System
Properties window that pops up. You'll have to click
I think it's a Hardware tab and a Device Manager button
but they both go to Device Manager.
And this looks pretty much the same in both XP and Vista but you have a list of
devices. We're looking for sound. Just go down and click the plus sign next to sound. Sound, Video,
and game controllers actually is where sound is
located.
In this one is called Sound Max Integrated Digital HD Audio.
Officially.
But if you find a device that you're looking for in this list
you can right-click that name
and just like update driver software. All you've got to do is be online.
Again. You say search automatically for updated drivers and software. It's going to
search your system
and
Microsoft's website.
And it'll just do it for you.
And if Microsoft didn't have it
HP didn't have it
maybe you're still looking for
the latest. Maybe you're a gamer. I am a gamer!
And somebody tells you probably update for the latest newest
driver for
your new graphics card.
Where would you go to get that?
I would go to the manufacturer's website for that graphic card.
OK. So I think we still have Device Manager open here? Right. So.
It's under Display Adapters. Alright. It's called a Display Adapter is your graphics
card or your hardware. In
this case we got -- right here.
An NVIDIA GeForce 933M GS. So this has a graphics card,
made by NVIDIA.
Yeah. So where would you go? So I'm going to go to NVIDIA.com.
Or I would go to my favorite search engine and type in in NVIDIA GeForce 9300M
and GS.
And driver, and go there.
Drivers are key if you're using search keywords. So for us we've
already gone out to NVIDIA.com. You know most of these sites are going to be different and
on the manufacturer if it's NVIDIA, if it's RealTech, if it's
you know MI, like that. The good news is you get the latest greatest
updates from the manufacturers website. The bad thing is you're going to have to
play on their turf. You're going to have to know where
the drivers are, learn where they keep their drivers. Right. And once you're in this space you're
out of HP's hands.
This is not HP giving this to you. You're now in INVIDIA's space, and HP may not have
qualified those drivers. They'll probably still work
but they may not in some scenarios. But here, INVIDIA, you just go to the same
like on HP, INVIDIA makes it easy, Download Drivers,
and it's a G force. Select your operating system that we already talked about
64-bit. and you're off. And there you go.
Depending on whoever the manufacturer is which you found in the Advice Manager just click the plus sign,
tells you who made it
go out and search for it.
HP has a
consumer support forum
and it's WWW.
HP.com.
Go to HP.com.
Click Support and Drivers and it is right there. It's Support and Drivers, Consumer Forum.
Here we go. There's a lot of people that are very smart, very sharp
that know how to find all these drivers. People come in and say hey where's my
driver for this
depending on who's online.
And they'll come in and give you the exact steps, the exact drivers you
need
and help you installing them.
This is a great place and this actually solves a lot of
people's problems. And you may even bump into us out here in the Forums.
We're a bunch of happy healthy geeks.
We're out there a bit. Others are out here a bit.
We're not going to tell you which people are there. You'll have to guess.
We hope that uh... we've given we've given you everything I know and I can't
think of any other way to find software and drivers. Really.
You're looking at me.
And do you have any ideas? We've covered most of it if not all of it.
That's it. See you in the Forums. Yeah. See you in the Forums.