Computer Hope
Hardware => Drivers => Topic started by: billrich on February 11, 2009, 07:15:25 AM
-
Is a Computer Driver hardware or software?
If a Computer Driver is software, why is a Computer Driver listed under Hardware?
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/d/driver.html
<<<<"
A program that controls a device. Every device, whether it be a printer, disk drive, or keyboard, must have a driver program. Many drivers, such as the keyboard driver, come with the operating system. For other devices, you may need to load a new driver when you connect the device to your computer. In DOS systems, drivers are files with a.SYS extension. In Windows environments, drivers often have a.DRV extension.
A driver acts like a translator between the device and programs that use the device. Each device has its own set of specialized commands that only its driver knows. In contrast, most programs access devices by using generic commands. The driver, therefore, accepts generic commands from a program and then translates them into specialized commands for the device.
">>>>
-
On this forum, it is split up into three sections.
Computer Hardware: As the name suggests, this section deals with hardware such as Hard Drives, Processors, ect...
Computer Software: Also as it says, this section is for software such as MS Office and such.
Computer Drivers: Again, as the name suggests, this section is purely for driver issues as it is pretty much hardware and software like you said.
-
the driver forum is under the hardware forum because driver issues cause the same issues as hardware problems.
-
But in answer to your query a driver is Software that enables Hardware to function...sometimes properly.
-
It's a high-stakes game of IRQL's,NMI's, and interrupts... but somebodies gotta play it.