From the course: Help Yourself: Tech Tips Weekly

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Checking the hardware

Checking the hardware

- [Instructor] Computer hardware that fails just stops working. You can try swapping out the component, but some hardware failure is due to a missing or outdated device driver, the software that controls the hardware. To perform a quick check on your PC's hardware, open the Device Manager. Tap the Windows key to pop up the start menu, and type Device Manager or as much of it as is necessary to see the item appear on the menu, and choose it. You see a list of hardware in your computer, organized by category. And immediately, if anything is suspect, an item in the list is flagged with a yellow warning icon. Now, you don't see any warning icons here because this system is running well. But should there be a problem, one of the items would be open, such as Display adapters, and you would see a yellow flag on the hardware, indicating that trouble that is afoot. If so, double-click the item to open it and view details. Here, the device status is normal. The device is working properly. If…

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