Electrical computers and digital data processing systems: input/ – Input/output data processing – Peripheral configuration
Reexamination Certificate
2001-03-07
2003-12-30
Gaffin, Jeffrey (Department: 2182)
Electrical computers and digital data processing systems: input/
Input/output data processing
Peripheral configuration
C710S008000, C710S062000, C710S100000, C710S104000, C709S241000, C709S241000, C709S241000, C717S176000, C717S177000, C717S178000, C717S174000, C717S175000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06671749
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is related to methods for installing computer peripheral drivers. In particular, the present invention is related to methods for automated location and installation of peripheral drivers.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Computer peripherals are widely present in the modern computer-saturated world. Printers, scanners, modems, gaming peripherals, external disk drives and the like are used by consumers and businesses in steadily increasing numbers. In order to properly function, these peripheral devices require software drivers. The driver generally provides a software interface that allows software applications running on the computer to functionally interface with the peripheral.
Upon initial purchase a peripheral typically comes with a driver on a disk or other medium for installation by the user. When initially setting up the peripheral, the user is required to install the software driver on his computer's operating system. Different drivers are provided for different computer and operating system configurations. By way of example, different operating system versions may require different drivers.
Additionally, for many peripherals different drivers are required to support different languages and peripheral feature sets. Printers, for instance, may have one driver that supports English, German, and Spanish. For support of Chinese or Japanese, however, a different driver may be required. Likewise, if the user wishes to utilize a special printer math character set, a particular driver may be required. Because the peripheral manufacturer generally does not know in what environment the peripheral will be installed, the manufacturer is often disadvantageously forced to provide multiple drivers with each peripheral thereby adding cost to their products.
Further, users are required to correctly make several determinations to choose the proper driver amongst the several available to install. For example, users must accurately determine factors such as what version operating system they are using, what model peripheral they are installing, what feature sets are supported by the peripheral, and the like. This disadvantageously adds time, effort, and confusion to the installation process. Often, users may make an erroneous determination resulting in the wrong driver being loaded. While this is obviously disadvantageous for the user, it is likewise disadvantageous for the manufacturer as it often leads to increased demands on customer support resources and low customer satisfaction.
Users are also required to maintain all of the supplied drivers in case their computer or network configuration should change in the future. For example, if a computer should crash, the driver may need to be re-installed. As another example, if the user should move the peripheral to a different computer having a different operating system or choose to utilize a special peripheral feature set at some time in the future, they may require a different driver.
Problems associated with finding and installing correct peripheral drivers are even more acute for manufacturers of peripheral servers and other devices designed to work with a plurality of existing peripherals. For these manufacturers, there may be a multiplicity of possible peripherals and associated drivers that will be required. By way of example, devices such as print servers are manufactured and sold to manage many different models of networked printers. It is not practical, and may even be impossible, for the manufacturer of the print server to provide drivers for each of the multiplicity of printers that may be managed by the server. The print server user may therefore be required to find a required driver(s) on her own.
Attempts to address these and other problems in the art have been made. In particular, manufacturers have provided for on-line access to drivers. Users can connect to a driver “library” over a data network such as the Internet to download a desired driver. Unfortunately, this practice still requires users to make a number of determinations in selecting the proper driver. Often a multiplicity of drivers is available from the on-line library, making selection of the proper driver more difficult. The user must also download the driver that is typically in a compressed format to a desired local location, find the downloaded driver, run a decompression algorithm, and then install it. An Internet based driver delivery system thus requires a degree of computer sophistication on the user's part to locate the correct web site and to properly execute the downloading and installation steps.
An additional proposed solution to these unresolved problems involves providing “generic” peripheral drivers with operating systems. These generic drivers in theory can be used with a variety of different peripherals from different manufacturers. While these drivers are relatively easy to find and install as they come pre-packaged with the operating system, they have proven to be problematic in practice. To make them “generically” usable with different peripheral devices, they typically provide only core functionality and may not support some features on a particular peripheral. For this and other reasons use of these generic drivers is often disadvantageous.
The several proposed solutions to these problems have also introduced a new set of problems for driver users. In particular, users are often confronted with multiple choices for obtaining drivers. By way of example, a peripheral user may have drivers available from a CD, a pre-installed operating system location, and an on-line driver library. Each of these locations may have a different driver that will work with the peripheral. Although each of these different drivers is operable, only one will be the most preferred. Some operable drivers, for example, may be old, obsolete versions that have unresolved bugs associated with them or that have only limited functionality.
The plurality of available drivers leads to confusion on the part of the user, who must determine which driver to select. Additionally, the “best” driver may differ for different users depending on their computing environment and criteria for selection. By way of example, some users may only use limited features on the peripheral and thus desire any operable driver. These users may simply desire the driver that is easiest to obtain and install. Other users may require advanced feature functionality and desire the most recently released and robust driver version regardless of the difficulty of obtaining and installation.
These and other problems thus remain heretofore unresolved in the art.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention generally comprises an improved method for locating and installing a new peripheral driver on an operating system. The method generally comprises the steps of creating a profile of the driver to be installed and searching locations from a list of potential driver sources for a driver that matches the driver profile. Once a matching driver is found, it is downloaded and installed on the operating system. The list of potential locations may be prioritized based on priority standards that may comprise ease of driver installation, most recently released driver version, and the like. The driver profile comprises information that may be reviewed to determine what particular driver is required, and preferably comprises a peripheral model number, an operating system version, and an operating system language.
Preferably, a resources profile is also created that generally describes the resources available to the operating system for obtaining a driver. This resources profile may be evaluated to determine whether any sources from the prioritized list of sources may be eliminated, thereby reducing time and effort associated with the method. The step of creating a resources profile comprises at least determining whether there are any existing drivers currently installed on the operating system, and more preferably further comprises determining a network environment f
Kunze Richard
Williams Brett
Gaffin Jeffrey
Hewlett--Packard Development Company, L.P.
Nguyen Mike
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