Hardware Drivers

Using stable hardware drivers made for your hardware and operating system is essential to successful server operation. During the initial installation of a server operating system, onboard hardware is normally detected, and drivers are provided from the operating system CD, where possible.

In some cases, particularly if the motherboard or other installed hardware is more recent than the operating system version being installed, some drivers need to be installed after the initial installation process.

Drivers can be installed in any of the following ways:

• Most hardware includes a driver CD. Depending on the hardware, it might be necessary to run an installation program on the CD before connecting the hardware. This is particularly common with USB devices and video cards that are not already supported by installed drivers.

• Windows Server and Windows 2000/XP prompt the user for the location of drivers after a new plug-and-play device is detected. If the driver files are on an accessible local or network drive, you can use the Browse button to direct Windows to the driver location to complete installation.

• Windows XP, starting with Service Pack 2, and Windows Server 2003 can use Windows Update to obtain device drivers when a new plug-and-play device has been detected. You can modify this behavior through Group Policy settings.

Note that Windows Server 2003 can use many, but not all, Windows XP drivers. These versions of Windows are also compatible with most Windows 2000 (Server or Professional) drivers.

For Linux installations, if the drivers for a particular device are not included as part of the distribution, you should check with the hardware vendor for compatible drivers. Note that different vendors' distributions and different versions of a particular Linux distribution usually require different drivers. If the hardware vendor does not have a driver, a driver might have been developed by an independent open-source developer. You should be sure to follow the instructions provided with the driver for building and installing the driver.

To update a driver in Windows, you open the Device Manager and then open the properties sheet for the device. You click Driver Details to see the current driver version and files. Then you click Update and follow the prompts to install an updated driver. You can click Rollback to revert to an earlier driver if a newer driver fails. If a faulty driver causes the system to fail to start normally, you can use safe mode to restart the system and then access the Device Manager (safe mode loads very few drivers); then you use Rollback. To remove a driver in Windows, you click Uninstall from the Driver tab of the device's properties sheet.

By default, Windows Server 2003 warns you if you attempt to install unsigned device drivers. To prevent installation of unsigned device drivers, you click Driver Signing on the Hardware tab of the System properties sheet and change the default action from Warn to Block. Although unsigned device drivers might cause system instability, in some cases, using an unsigned driver is the only way to get a particular hardware device to operate in Windows.