Hardware is best described as a device that is physically hooked up to your computer. Something that you can physically touch with two hands such as a Hard Drive or CD-ROM.

BEFORE INSTALLING

Before installing hardware it is generally a good idea to ensure that you have the available resources that the hardware may require. See our system resources page for information about system resources.

CLEANING HARDWARE

Information on cleaning any of your hardware components within the computer please see our Hardware cleaning page.

DRIVERS

Drivers for hardware devices can be found on our drivers page.

ADDING HARDWARE

Additional information and help with adding computer hardware components can be found on document CHADD.

Additionally added hardware is one of the more common possibilities for why a computer could be encountering issues. For example added RAM can cause Fatal OE error messages or other random error messages. Added scanner can cause problems with printers not being able to print. Added printers can cause problems with such programs as Comm Central.

When adding internal cards such as a new modem, sound card, or cards such as these which  utilize additional IRQs (Interrupt Request) could possibly share the same IRQ as a device that may already be on the computer. This can cause the computer not to boot up, cause other device to stop working, or both added and original hardware to stop functioning. If you have recently added a card within the computer and are encountering issues with original or added hardware it is recommended you review our system resources page.

When adding hardware into the computer this does not mean that you will encounter the above issues. However it is a possibility and something to look out for.