Patent ID: 7299169

Claim:
A system for loading a device driver for an IEEE 1394-enabled device comprising: a computer running an operating system; an IEEE 1394-enabled device configured to store a device driver or a pointer to a device driver in non-volatile memory; and an IEEE 1394-compliant bus configured to couple the IEEE 1394-enabled device to the computer, wherein said computer executes the steps of detecting that the IEEE 1394-enabled device is coupled to the IEEE 1394-compliant bus; responsive to the detecting, determining if either a device driver or a pointer to a device driver compatible with the operating system is stored in the non-volatile memory; responsive to the determining, automatically loading the device driver if either a device driver or a pointer to a device driver compatible with the operating system is stored in the non-volatile memory; and responsive to the determining, prompting a user to manually load a device driver compatible with the operating system, if neither a device driver nor a pointer to a device driver compatible with the operating system is stored in the non-volatile memory, and wherein the pointer includes a uniform resource locator (URL).