How to Update Drivers for Plug-and-Play Devices

By Dustin Lamb

USB devices are often plug-and-play.
i Tastatur und USB / Keyboard and USB image by Nazar Chabara from Fotolia.com

Plug-and-play devices include keyboards, external hard drives and other hardware that can simply be plugged into your computer and will work without manually installing software. You can update the driver used for a plug-and-play device to fix issues that you are experiencing with the device or if you want to use the newest version of the software. Device Manager can be used to search for a newer version or you can select the driver from a list or a location on your computer.

Click "Start," right-click "Computer" and click "Manage." Click "Device Manager" in the list on the left.

Click the arrow to the left of the device group for the device that you are updating. This could be "Disk Drives," "Keyboards" or another group.

Right-click the name of the device and click "Update Driver Software." Click "Search Automatically for Updated Driver Software" to have your computer search for a newer driver than the one in use on the Internet.

Click "Browse My Computer for Driver Software" if you have downloaded a newer driver yourself and want to use it. Follow the steps on the screen to complete the update.

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