You’ve got Windows 7 up and running. That was the easy part.
Now comes the challenge of getting all of your hardware and software to run properly with the new operating system.
Everything from unrecognized device drivers to application compatibility can give you headaches in Windows 7 if you’re not sure how to correct the problems. Read on for some answers.
Q: Every time I start Windows 7, it tries but fails to find a USB device driver. An error message tells me about this every time I start the computer. Everything is plugged in and working, so I’m not sure what is missing. How can I find out?
A: This can be a tough issue to solve, since there could be a lot of causes. So start by using a process of elimination.
If you have any internal add-on USB cards in your PC, remove them. Make sure, too, that you have downloaded and installed all of the motherboard chipset and device drivers from the manufacturer of your motherboard or computer. Unplug all your USB devices (except keyboard and mouse, if these are USB-based), and restart your computer.
If you still see an error, you know that it’s caused by something inside your PC, which would again point to an internal add-in card or a chipset issue.
You can also turn to the free Unknown Device Identifier (http://www.zhangduo.com/udi.html), a small utility which will give you more information about every device that shows up in the Windows Device Manager as “unknown” or with a yellow exclamation mark next to it. The utility works with all recent versions of Windows, including Windows 7.
Q: I have an older application — Adobe InDesign CS2 — that does not seem to run well under Windows 7. I don’t want to buy an updated version. What are my choices?
A: First, since the…