Now, wait patiently for Windows to identify the most suitable drivers for your device and, if available, proceed with their installation; when prompted, restart your computer and that’s it. If the search is not successful, click on Search for updated drivers in Windows Update and press the Check for updates button, located in the settings screen that opens .

When the search is complete, if there are any updates for the device drivers, they will be listed among the optional updates; therefore, click on the View all optional updates item that appears in the Windows Update screen, expand the Driver Updates section by pressing the & gt; button and put the check mark next to any available item; if you wish, also select the updates dedicated to the other Windows components.

Finally, click on the Download and install button located at the bottom and, at the end of the procedure, restart your computer by pressing the appropriate button. To verify the correct installation of the drivers, reopen the Device Manager utility and check that there are no more unrecognized devices and / or with problematic drivers.

And if the missing or damaged drivers are not available even on Windows Update, you just have to try to download them directly from the website of the device manufacturer , precisely from the area dedicated to support and download : once you have identified the most suitable driver package for the problematic device, download it, start the file received and complete installation, following the simple procedure you see on the screen. Usually, this boils down to pressing the Yes / OK / Continue buttons several consecutive times and restarting your computer at the end of the procedure.

If you just can’t find the section dedicated to drivers independently, try to search Google for phrases such as [manufacturer / brand and model of device] Windows driver and identify, among the various pages proposed, the website belonging to the device manufacturer. Please take care to download only and exclusively files and drivers from web pages of proven reliability and reliability: in fact, there are Internet sites containing clearly bogus drivers, designed exclusively to carry malware and other types of cyber threats on the computers of the unfortunate victims. Be careful.

If you are having difficulty completing the manual download of the drivers you need, please feel free to read my guide on how to install device drivers , in the which I have provided you with valuable information about the right procedures to get the right files, to be used to configure the most well-known categories of PC components: sound card , video card , motherboard , network card, printer and webcam .

Other programs to download missing drivers on Windows

One of the very few exceptions what I feel like doing, as regards the software capable of automatically picking up the peripheral drivers rica, concerns programs of this type distributed by manufacturers of pre-assembled desktop PCs and notebooks : they, in fact, allow you to retrieve and install the drivers of hardware devices that are part of the computer in complete autonomy, without having to manually download them from the Internet or having to use the appropriate recovery disk. To give you an example, the program dedicated to ASUS branded computers is called ASUS LiveUpdate ; that of Dell , on the other hand, is called SupportAssist and can be started directly from the manufacturer’s website.

Programs of this type are extremely functional when For example, the computer is formatted from scratch , reinstalling a fresh copy of the operating system from scratch , without using the specific recovery utilities. These programs are available exclusively on the website of the computer manufacturer , in the Support / Download section: you must first indicate the model of your computer in the appropriate field (if you do not know it, you can retrieve it using the Speccy software), access the section dedicated to drivers and proceed with the download of the dedicated program, using the appropriate link . Please be patient and avoid using the Google “shortcut” in such circumstances: you may find yourself downloading files that are not exactly legitimate and potentially harmful.

< / p>

Missing driver programs: macOS

And on Mac ? In the rare event that you find yourself with missing, outdated, or partially functional drivers, you must first look for any updates available through the operating system. To proceed, open System Preferences , by clicking on the gear icon located in the Dock , click on the icon Software update and then on the Advanced… button, located on the screen that appears.

To finish, put the check mark next to all the resident items in the next window (in particular the one relating to the installation of system data files and security updates ), click on the OK button and wait for macOS to check for available updates. If there are any, when the download is complete, click on the Install / Download and restart button and wait patiently for the process to be completed. More info here .

If the peripherals continue to show malfunctions or not be recognized, you can try to reset the NVRAM memory and / or the SMC system of the Mac and then check that all connected devices (internal and external) are working correctly. As a last resort, you can also try reinstalling a new copy of macOS (but leaving your personal data intact), in order to restore system files to their original versions: I know, that’s an operation drastic, but it is also often the one that turns out to be decisive!

Author

Salvatore Aranzulla

Salvatore Aranzulla is the most widely read blogger and IT popularizer in Italy. He is known for discovering vulnerabilities in Google’s sites and
Microsoft. He collaborates with computer magazines and edited the technological column of the newspaper Il Messaggero. He is the founder of Aranzulla.it, one of the
thirty most visited sites in Italy, in which he responds with simplicity to thousands of computer-related doubts. He has published for Mondadori and
Mondadori Informatica.