What is a print driver and how often do I need to update my printer driver?

A pop-up appeared from HP asking me if I wanted to up-date. thinking this would make the printer work more efficiently and not knowing this would seriously affect the driver on my computer I accepted to upgrade.
I had to pay for an engineer to put my computer back in order as there was a serious fault because of the upgrade.
I would not have expected such problems.
I now have an HP photosmart printer just for photos but am nervous about installing it.

new driver for windows vista

In general, a driver is a piece of software that the computer operating system needs in order to understand how to operate an attached device. The driver is very important because it also acts like a translator between the device and all programs that use the device. Every device attached to the computer including keyboard, mouse, printer, and scanner needs a driver.
Drivers are frequently updated to eliminate bugs and/or to incorporate changes. If your printer is working properly with all of your programs, you don t have to update it. If your printer doesn t work properly when you install new software, you should see if an updated driver is available. Also, if you move your printer to a new computer, you should always visit the Web site of the printer manufacturer to obtain the most current printer driver to install on the new computer.

If you upgrade a driver and there are problems, you can always (in windows xp, although other OS should be similar) go into device manager > Hardware then right-click on the printer and select properties, select driver and you have the option to roll the driver back to the previous working version.

If this still doesn't work you can set a system restore point just before installing a driver which you can return to from system properties which will usually solve the problem completely

Hp drivers are often updated, and usually there is no problem with their released versions, however certain conflicts can exist as everyone's system is slightly different

Hope this helps :)

what operating system are you using if it vista the driver isn't out yet

my printer do not working with original CD we have to find vista driver