IT Dojo: Troubleshoot Windows Vista drivers with Driver Query and DriverView

Bill Detwiler: When Windows Vista was first released, many early adopters complained of device driver incompatibilities with older hardware. Since then, most hardware vendors have released updated, Vista compatible drivers, but unfortunately even updating your drivers doesn't always put a stop to erratic driver behavior.

I'm Bill Detwiler, and in this IT Dojo, I'll show you two handy tools that can help you solve those pesky Vista driver problems.

When you're troubleshooting a problem in Windows Vista that you suspect is related to a driver, it's always a good first step to gather information about that driver. Now, you can find detailed information about the driver by going to Device Manager, selecting the device from the list, and viewing its Properties sheet.

Although this technique is fine when you re looking for information on a specific device driver, it's not very efficient when need to look up more than one.

If you're investigating several drivers at a time, you can use a native command-line tool called Driver Query or you can use a third-party utility called DriverView.

First, let's take a look at the command-line tool.

Driver Query is a command-line tool that is designed to provide you with a detailed list of all the device drivers installed on a local system or on any system on a network.

You run Driver Query by entering driverquery (all one word) at a command prompt.

Now as with most command-line tools, Driver Query has a series of parameters, which allow you to filter and format the command's output.

For example, using the /si parameter provides information on just the signed drivers. Using the /v parameter (verbose mode) provides more details. Using the /fo parameter allows you to format the results as a list or to save the results in a comma separated value file so you can open them in a spreadsheet application such as Excel.

Since using the CSV file and Excel is a great way to perform detailed analysis on your drivers, I'll show you two ways to use the driverquery command with the parameters I just mentioned.

First, to create a spreadsheet file containing information about only the signed drivers, you would open a Command Prompt window and type the command:

Driverquery /fo csv /si  > signeddrivers.csv

To create a spreadsheet file containing detailed information about all the installed drivers, you would use the command:

Driverquery /fo csv /v  > alldrivers.csv

The output for each of these commands would be stored in the signeddrivers.csv and alldrivers.csv files respectively.

The second tool that's useful for troubleshooting drivers is DriverView from NirSoft.

This tool is a lightweight utility with a simple graphical interface for viewing detailed information about all the installed drivers on your system. There s no installation procedure, just download the zip file, extract the executable DriverView.exe, and run it.

You can download DriverView from the TechRepublic Software Library or NirSoft's Web site.

When you launch DriverView, you'll see a spreadsheet-like display.

The column headers clearly identify the type of information included about each driver. By default, the drivers are sorted alphabetically by the name of the driver. However, you can sort by any column just by clicking the column header. A triangle icon indicates whether the sort is ascending or descending.

While all the pertinent information about the driver is displayed in the driver's row, you can view each individual driver file's properties as well as the driver's properties. To view the driver file's properties, just select the driver and press [F8]. For example, here's the mouclass.sys file's properties.

To view only the driver's properties, double-click it to see the details in a single dialog box.

You can also create HTML Reports containing all the drivers in the list or just those drivers that you select. Pull down the View menu and select that HTML Report option. This HTML report shows all the driver files for the AVG antivirus application.

If you're still having driver trouble with Windows Vista, I hope these two tools help you troubleshoot and resolve the problems. And if you've found other ways to solve pesky driver problems, share you solutions in the IT Dojo blog.

And as always, for more teachings on your path to becoming an IT Ninja, visit itdojo.techrepublic.com. And please let us know if this tip was helpful.

You can also submit your favorite IT Ninja tips by e-mailing them to us at itdojo@techrepublic.com. If we use them for an episode of IT Dojo, we'll send you a TechRepublic coffee mug.

I'm Bill Detwiler. Thanks for visiting TechRepublic's IT Dojo.