Summer Driver's Guide

By David Shamah, Jerusalem Post

What will you do? What Will You Do?

It's a big enough question to repeat at third time. If you ever had to reformat your computer, how quickly would you be able to get back up and running?

Let's say your system got hit by one of those impossible to fix virii that always seem to be making the rounds these days. Fortunately, you have always been conscientious enough to back up important documents, whether by copying them to a floppy, a network disk, or sending yourself an e-mail with an important file attached (a very cheap and easy way to keep tabs on stuff, now that Yahoo has upped everyone's mailbox to 100 MB of storage!).

But when you have to reformat, you don't just reformat your personal files; you reformat the whole computer! Quick: If you had to, could you reproduce your Windows license serial number? What company manufactured your video card, and what model is it? What about your modem or network card? Do you have their drivers stored on a floppy disk somewhere? Could you gather all the information necessary to get your computer back to a working state within two or three hours? I ask again: What Will You Do?

Don't look at me like that – this isn’t paranoia, and if you have not yet become a victim of one of these super-destructive viruses, count your blessings but live in dread because it is going to happen to you – I guarantee it. And while reformatting does not have to be the end of the world, it can sometimes mean the end of productive work for days at a time while the hapless computer owner tries to track down all the pieces that go into making up the puzzle of a complete, working computer system. If you don't have your video driver, you are going to have to rely on Windows default VGA driver, that holdover from the earliest days of Windows. But without the million colors, you can't do your Photoshop work! But if you don't know your Photoshop license, you won't be able to work with the program anyway. Forget Photoshop – if you don't know your Windows license, you ain't going anywhere!

I know what some of you are thinking: That it won't happen to you, because you scan attachments, have Norton or Mcaffee or some other expensive virus program installed, etc. So maybe your hard drive can withstand a virus onslaught; can it stand dying from old age? The answer is no – every computer component dies of old age at some point. And "at some point" usually comes the night before the big paper or the big presentation or the big test, etc.

Maybe you do have all your papers, drivers and licenses in order. But I'm betting you don't. Lots of those components were installed ages ago, and their driver disks have gone the way of all silicon. And even if you're the type to hire a computer guy to do this under the bonnet kind of work, they will appreciate having this information ready to go – and they will probably charge you less money for the work. Otherwise, the only way for them to figure out which drivers are which is to open the computer up and check the little numbers on the cards. Geeky and effective, but dirty work.

So we're agreed: You need some way to keep track of your licenses, drivers and serial numbers, just in case. And, it wouldn’t hurt to know a little bit about the bits and pieces that are a part of your marvelous little machine.

If you want to see what the insides of your computer looks like, look no further than Belarc Home Advisor, which will instantly analyze your PC and deliver a full report crammed with information and statistics that will help you reconstruct things when and if the time for reformatting comes.

When you run the program, Belarc produces its report on a local Web page, which lets you easily navigate between its sections. Among other things, the program will tell you about your operating system version and your patch history. Each patch (also known as hot fixes) has a link describing what each one does. These are the same patches that you download with your Windows Update, the ones Microsoft deems extremely important to protect your system. Now, with Belarc Advisor, you have an easy way of finding out what each one does.

The program also lists installed memory, disk information, software versions, and, where relevant, software licenses and product keys, including your Microsoft operating system license, which you of course you need to reinstall the system. The program saves all this information in its Web file, which you should copy onto another medium as soon as possible. Belarc takes great pains to stress that it does not download any information to its own servers, by the way. Belarc is free for home use, and can be downloaded from http: // www. belarc.com/free_download.html (for all PCs).

But patches and licenses are only half the story. Even more difficult for most people to track down are their system drivers. A driver, of course, is a little piece of software that tells your system how to use the peripheral or device you want to use. Your network card may emerge from a reformat intact, but which card do you have? Your system needs to know what to do with the card – that it communicates on a network, can handle a specific download speed, etc. The problem with drivers is that there are so many of them; there are hundreds of different network cards, for example, and all of them communicate with the system a bit differently.

When you buy a card or peripheral, it usually comes with a floppy disk or CD installation program that you run when you set up the device. Then you put the disk or CD away – and, unless you are very organized, you never find it again, at least when you need it. And, of course, there is always the danger of a driver CD becoming inoperable due to scratches, etc.

But you can avoid the hassle of long searches through Web sites and unending attempts to revive driver disks, just run DriverGuide Toolkit, (http: // www. driverguidetoolkit.com/) which will back up all your drivers into a folder of your choosing. Zip up and copy this folder onto another drive and start reformatting. When you reinstall the system and starting setting up your cards and peripherals, you will have all the driver installation (.inf) files you need! The program can back up all drivers, but it recommends you back up only non-Windows drivers, since Windows drivers are installed by the Windows install process or patches you subsequently download. The program can also download driver updates directly from manufacturers or from the Driverguide Web site (http: // www. driverguide.com) a free to join Web site that has an exhaustive archive of almost every driver in existence – over 100,000, with links to manufacturers and member discussions and suggestions about possible substitutes, whether a Windows 2000 driver will work with XP, etc. Backing up your drivers may not be the most glamorous computer task you will engage in, but it might be one of the most important – for your computer's health, and your own mental health, too!

Belarc Advisor is free for use on your home PC. DriverGuide Toolkit is shareware, but you can use it free for two days ($19.95 afterwards). For all Windows systems.

Sends questions/comments to ds@newzgeek.com