Should You Worry About 'Driver Incompatibility' Warnings?

If you've ever manually updated your drivers, chances are you would have seen the driver incompatibility warnings that Windows generates telling you the driver you're installing isn't digitally signed or may be incompatible with your hardware. HereÕs how to resolve each type of conflict.

Incompatibility Warnings: Press Ahead or Bail Out?

Both Windows XP and Windows Vista have a Driver Protection List blacklist that stores records of drivers that are known to be incompatible or break things in Windows by default. If you attempt to install a new device or program using a Setup.exe file, Driver Protection will almost always pop up and alert you: '... driver is not compatible with this version of Windows.'

However, there is a workaround to force the installation through: loading the 'incompatible' driver by bypassing the Setup.exe, Windows XP will be unable to prevent the installation of the new driver. The downside is that it still may not load properly sometime in the future. If this is the case, Windows will alert you by popping up a balloon-warning in the Taskbar letting you know that the driver didn't load properly.

Of course, the first thing to try when troubleshooting is to disable or remove the driver that's incompatible. You may also have to remove an entire program if the driver was specially packaged with a software program. Adobe is particularly bad for this. Simply navigate to Add/Remove Programs to remove the offending application.

Note: Always create a system restore checkoint in Windows prior to making any significant system or program changes.

You'll need to use the Windows Device Manager to make changes to a hardware peripheral or a component. For Windows XP, navigate to the Control Panel and select 'Systems'. Once you're in the 'Systems Properties' area, select the Hardware tab at the top of the dialog. Next, select the 'Device Manager' option.

If you're using Windows Vista, select Start, Control Panel, System And Maintenance, Device Manager. Select the Continue button if the UAC (User Account Control) dialog box appears. You should now see the Windows Device Manager.

With the Device Manager open, you'll be able to see a full list of your computer's installed hardware and peripheral components.

Select the plus sign adjacent to the category of device that you have installed. by way of example, let's use a mouse. Under mice, double-click the name of the mouse you just installed and select the 'Driver' tab at the top of the dialog box that opens. To finish up, select the 'Uninstall' option to start the process of removing old the driver from your system. Next, you should reboot Windows.

Almost all new applications and peripherals are now Windows XP compatible, and most even have the 'Designed for Microsoft Windows XP' logo right on the box, so be sure to watch out for that logo.

That said, if you just picked up or inherited a perfectly good, older device that you'd like to use, you may indeed run into the Windows Driver Incompatibility dialog.

Although most hardware and device vendors work hard to keep their products up-to-date with the lastest Microsoft operating systems, they often have to draw the line as to how far back their driver archives will go, and whether they should make very old devices in their catalogue compatible with the lastest versions of Windows. Almost always though, device manufacturers offer links to downloads of new and archived drivers in the Support or Downloads section of their respective websites.

If, for some reason, the devices vendor doesn't list the driver you need on their site, Microsoft's Windows Update website may contain a version from the past that will suit your needs. Other third party drivers sites have archives as well, or you could use our automatic driver update tool, Driver Wizard. It does all the grunt work for you!

What if you need to go back in time?

Periodically, it may be too late to simply update your driver, and you may need to roll back to a previous version of the driver that used to work for you. A simple way to do this is to use the Roll Back Driver utility found in Windows XP and Vista.

To access this feature, navigate to the Device Manager, choose the device with the incompatible driver and select 'Properties'. Next, on the 'Driver' tab at the top of the dialog box, select 'Roll Back Driver'. This procedure should take your system back to the working state it was in, before you installed the incompatible driver.

Make sure to leverage Windows' System Restore

When you're deep down in the system plumbing like this, it's critical to use the System Restore function baked into Windows to cover yourself in the event that something goes wrong during the update and repair process. You should make a practice of establishing a System Restore checkpoint every time you attempt to update a driver, install a new application or connect a new device. This step can save your bacon if you start experiencing bizarre, hard-to-identify issues after updating your drivers or programs.

Best of luck with troubleshooting incompatible driver problems!