Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about DriverMax
How do I get a free registration code for DriverMax?
Just follow the instructions in the program.
Also, please make sure to download the latest
version of DriverMax, and install it.
After that, please follow the instructions in the program to register it.
I haven't received the e-mail containing my registration code!
This may be because your e-mail provider is blocking our e-mails completely,
or putting them in your Spam or Junk Mail folder.
This is not our fault! Please don't complain to us - instead, complain
to your e-mail provider that you can't receive e-mails from us.
In order to register DriverMax, you could create a new, free e-mail account
from services such as GMail or
Yahoo Mail and use that account to receive
the activation e-mail.
I'm trying to register DriverMax, but it says that my e-mail address is
already in use
Unfortunately there is not much we can do.
Please create a new, free e-mail account from e-mail providers such as
GMail or
Yahoo Mail and use that account to receive the activation e-mail.
Unfortunately not. We are working on this. Windows Vista 64 bit and XP 64 biti are
different from the 32 bit versions in many ways. Our tech team is working very
hard and DriverMax *will* be able to offer 64 bit driver downloads.
What are those long strings of numbers and letters that appear next to
the download links?
The long string is used by us for internal purposes for the proper
identification of a particular driver. It's an internal coding of the file
for identification only.
Why do some similarly named drivers, with the same version, have
different sizes (in KBytes or MBytes)?
Because the makers of that hardware released several variants (versions)
of the driver, which are different and have different sizes, but they did
not bother to change the version number stored in the driver itself.
This is not our fault, and there is not much
we can do. This is a mistake of the makers of the hardware, and it makes
troubleshooting and finding the best version for a driver harder for
everybody.
The only solution for this problem would be for the hardware makers to
become more disciplined and always
modify the
version number of a driver, whenever they modify the driver itself.
How can I actually download the driver updates?
First solution. If you go to the "Available updates" tab
of the DriverMax Agent you will see all the updates that we can actually offer
you for download. This page is refreshed daily. The Agent can not check more
than once a day because we want to avoid server overloads. By default, after the
DriverMax installation, an automatic update check is performed.
Second solution. If you go to the "Check for driver updates" in the main
program, DriverMax will display a web page containing the list of all devices in
your computer. You can manually check if there are any updates by visiting each
device's web page. Unfortunately you will see here all possible driver versions
for each device - no matter if we can offer you that file for download or not.
This is less processor-consuming and everyone can refresh this page every
minute.
Why do I get a file named "real_download.php" instead
of the actual download?
This happens only because of your Internet browser or
download manager. The problem is on your computer, please don't contact us
about it. You can either use a different browser or stop the download
manager. After clicking on the download link you should be asked if you want
to save or open the file. Chosse "Open" then the DriverMax Agent will start
to download the driver you requested. The Open / Save dialog looks like
this:
 |
or |
 |
| The open dialog when downloading a driver in Internet Explorer |
|
The open dialog when downloading a driver in Mozilla Firefox |
I just installed a new driver version but the old version
is still listed
In order for the driver update to be complete we recommend
you to follow a few steps:
- download the driver using the DriverMax Agent
- install the driver (you should see a success / failure report)
- if the installation was successful then restart you computer
- check for driver updates again using DriverMax - the new driver version should
appear under "your version"
Where's the activation link?
There is no activation link! You are running an older version of DriverMax,
which we no longer support.
Please update to the latest version of DriverMax
and follow the instructions in the program to activate it.
When will driver downloads be available?
Why can't I update my drivers?
For now, driver downloads are ONLY
available for Windows Vista 32 bit and Wndows XP 32 bit.
Because it is our policy to meet the needs of all our
consumers, we at Innovative Solutions have long concentrated our efforts in
the research and development of products that are compatible with new and
emerging technologies, such as Windows Vista, as well as with more
established operating systems, such as Windows XP. With this in mind, we are
working diligently to make the interoperability of DriverMax a top priority
so that users of Windows XP and Windows Vista alike can enjoy the benefits
of DriverMax. Development of the 64 bit edition is in its early stages and,
because estimates of completion are unclear at this time, we are unable to
provide a market date at this time.
Click here
for detailed information.
I need drivers for my device called ....
We are very sorry but we can not e-mail you drivers for your hardware. You
may be able to get drivers for your device when we finish working on the driver
downloads feature.
Why aren't you replying to my e-mail?
We are very busy working on improvements for DriverMax. We also receive a
very large number of e-mails every day. We try to answer all our e-mails, but sometimes it's simply impossible due to
the large volume of e-mails arriving every day.
What do you rather have us do - work on new features for DriverMax, or answer
e-mail all day?
Please keep in mind that we are already offering you a very valuable program
for free. This program incorporates a lot of work, so, please be very patient
and forgiving, and forward all the bug reports to us.
I want to support DriverMax!
Thank you for helping us spread the word.
Please write about DriverMax in your blog, web site or
forum.
Can we publish DriverMax on a magazine's included DVD or CD?
Yes! You are welcome to do so. Please download the latest version, to make
sure that your users get the best version of DriverMax yet!
Where can I get some other cool programs?
Click here for our main web site,
containing all the programs that are available from us.
How do I uninstall DriverMax?
Like you would uninstall any other Windows program.
Click here for
step by step information.
Do I need to pay for DriverMax?
No! DriverMax is a FREE program. You can use it FREE OF
CHARGE on all your computers.
Please refund the money I paid for DriverMax
DriverMax is a FREE program and was always a FREE program.
We sometimes get this question from people who have purchased another
computer program, and mistake it for DriverMax.
Please double-check if the program you paid for is indeed DriverMax.
In case you did pay for DriverMax, then please contact us - we need to know
if some web site is charging for it, and prosecute them. It is an abuse to
charge for a free program such as DriverMax - please notify us of such things,
so we can take action. Make sure you always include the web site address where
you bought it from.
Can I use DriverMax for more than one computer? Do I need to register again and again?
Thank you for your message. DriverMax can be used on several computers
with the same username and password. After receiving the registration
email and after validating your account - you will have to use the
same username and password when running DriverMax on the second,
third, Nth... computer. All your computers will then appear in the DriverMax Control Panel. :)
A device driver,
or a software driver is a type of computer software, typically developed to
make the hardware in your computer work. Typically this constitutes an
interface for communicating with the device, through the specific computer
bus or communications subsystem that the hardware is connected to, providing
commands to and/or receiving data from the device, and on the other end, the
requisite interfaces to the operating system and software applications.
Often called a driver for short, it is a specialized hardware dependent
computer program which is also operating system specific that enables
another program, typically an operating system or applications software
package or computer program running under the operating system kernel, to
interact transparently with a hardware device, and usually provides the
requisite interrupt handling necessary for any necessary asynchronous
time-dependent hardware interfacing needs.
Device driver theory
The key design
goal of device drivers is abstraction. Every model of hardware (even within
the same class of device) is different. Newer models also are released by
manufacturers that provide more reliable or better performance and these
newer models are often controlled differently.
Computers and their operating systems cannot be expected to know how to
control every device, both now and in the future. To solve this problem,
operating systems essentially dictate how every type of device should be
controlled. The function of the device driver is then to translate these OS
mandated function calls into device specific calls. In theory a new device,
which is controlled in a new manner, should function correctly if a suitable
driver is available. This new driver will ensure that the device appears to
operate as usual from the operating systems' point of view.
Depending on the specific computer architecture, drivers can be 8-bit,
16-bit, 32-bit, and more recently, 64-bit. This corresponds directly to the
architecture of the operating system for which those drivers were developed.
For example, in 16-bit Windows 3.11, most drivers were 16-bits, while most
drivers for 32-bit Windows XP are 32-bit. More recently, specific 64-bit
Linux and Windows versions have required hardware vendors to provide newer
64-bit drivers for their devices.
Device driver development
Writing a device
driver is considered a challenge in most cases, as it requires an in-depth
understanding of how a given platform functions, both at the hardware and
the software level. Because many device drivers execute in kernel mode,
software bugs often have much more damaging effects to the system. This is
in contrast to most types of user-level software running under modern
operating systems, which can be stopped without greatly affecting the rest
of the system. Even drivers executing in user mode can crash a system if the
device being controlled is erroneously programmed. These factors make it
more difficult and dangerous to diagnose problems.
All of this means that the engineers most likely to write device drivers
come from the companies that develop the hardware. This is because they have
more complete access to information about the design of their hardware than
most outsiders. Moreover, it was traditionally considered in the hardware
manufacturer's interest to guarantee that their clients would be able to use
their hardware in an optimum way. However, in recent years non-vendors too
have written numerous device drivers, mainly for use under free operating
systems. In such cases, co-operation on behalf of the vendor is still
important, however, as reverse engineering is much more difficult with
hardware than it is with software, meaning it may take a long time to learn
to operate hardware that has an unknown interface.
In Windows, Microsoft is attempting to address the issues of system
instability by poorly written device drivers by creating a new framework for
driver development known as Windows Driver Foundation (WDF). This includes
UMDF User Mode Driver Framework that encourages development of certain types
of drivers - primarily those that implement a message-based protocol for
communicating with their devices - as user mode drivers. If such drivers
malfunction they will not cause system instability. The KMDF Kernel Mode
Driver Framework model continues to allow development of kernel-mode device
drivers, but attempts to provide standard implementations of functions that
are well known to cause problems, including cancellation of I/O operations,
power management, and plug and play device support.
Device driver applications
Because of the
diversity of modern hardware and operating systems, many ways exist in which
drivers can be used. Drivers are used for interfacing with:
-
Printers
-
Video adapters
-
Network cards
-
Sound cards
-
Local buses of
various sorts - in particular, for bus mastering on modern systems
-
Low-bandwidth
I/O buses of various sorts (for pointing devices such as mice,
keyboards, USB, etc.)
-
computer
storage devices such as hard disk, CD-ROM and floppy disk buses (ATA,
SATA, SCSI)
-
Implementing
support for different file systems
-
Implementing
support for image scanners and digital cameras
Choosing and
installing the correct device drivers for given hardware is often a key
component of computer system configuration.
Virtual device drivers
A particular
variant of device drivers are virtual device drivers. They are used in
virtualization environments, for example when an MS-DOS program is run on a
Microsoft Windows computer or when a guest operating system is run inside
e.g. VMware. Instead of enabling the guest operating system to dialog with
hardware, virtual device drivers take the opposite role and emulate a piece
of hardware, so that the guest operating system and its drivers running
inside a virtual machine can have the illusion of accessing real hardware.
Attempts by the guest operating system to access the hardware are routed to
the virtual device driver in the host operating system as e.g. function
calls.
The virtual device
driver can also send simulated processor-level events like interrupts into
the virtual machine.
