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Understanding Drivers, BIOS, UEFI, and Firmware

Landing page with links for understanding Drivers, BIOS, UEFI, and Firmware

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Landing page with links for understanding Drivers, BIOS, UEFI, and Firmware

Description

This topic describes the meaning of BIOS, UEFI, drivers, and firmware. BIOS, drivers, and firmware are used to help keep your computer up-to-date.

Applicable Brands

Lenovo Laptop, Desktops, & Tablets

Driver

A driver allows the computer to communicate with the hardware. For example, a USB flash drive is a physical device that, when plugged into a computer, needs to “talk” with the computer to function. Drivers in the computer, specifically for the USB, communicate and operate the USB.

Lenovo recommendation: Only update drivers when the device is NOT performing as expected. It is not required to have the latest hardware driver for every component in your computer.

Where to get your drivers: support.lenovo.com

Note: Select your product at the support Home Page > then click Drivers & Software. Select Component and the correct Operating System > then finally choose the available Drivers.

For more information:

Windows Update: Lenovo recommends to set Windows Update to automatically download, and install important and recommended updates. This ensures that the system has the latest security updates, and other fixes. For more information, go to: Windows Update: FAQ.

BIOS and UEFI

BIOS and UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) are two firmware interfaces for computers which work as an interpreter between the operating system and the computer firmware. Both of these interfaces are used at the startup of the computer to initialize the hardware components and start the operating system which is stored on the hard drive.

UEFI was introduced in Windows 8 to replace BIOS. UEFI firmware provides technical advantages over a BIOS system.

Watch our videos:

For more information:

Firmware (Mobile Phones/Tablets)

Firmware is the programming that delivers specific instructions to the hardware that tells your phone how it operates. Sometimes features are added, or there are updates to improve the operation. This “software for hardware” is called a firmware update. When you load a firmware update to your hardware, the basic code gets overwritten by new operating instructions.

Register your Lenovo device to make sure you receive critical product support and upgrades.

Always confirm the device model number is compatible with the firmware update by clicking Android Upgrade Matrix.


Document ID:HT103672
Original Publish Date:07/15/2015
Last Modified Date:10/11/2024