Patent ID: 7949733

Claim:
A driver management system, comprising: a user terminal that is connected to a first subnet among subnets which form a network; and a plurality of devices, each being connected to one of the subnets and requiring a driver for operation from the user terminal, wherein the user terminal comprises: an instruction detection section that detects a printing instruction; a driver retracting section that, when a corresponding driver to a device connected to a second subnet to which the user terminal is not currently connected has been installed on the detection of the printing instruction by the instruction detection section, retracts the corresponding driver so that the user terminal cannot recognize the corresponding driver, wherein the second subnet includes more than one device; a device detection section that detects devices connected to the first subnet to which the user terminal is currently connected after the corresponding driver is retracted by the driver retracting section; a driver acquisition section that, when a device for which a driver corresponding thereto is not installed is present among the devices detected by the device detection section, acquires a driver corresponding to the device; and an install processing section that installs the driver acquired by the driver acquisition section in the user terminal, wherein the driver acquisition section, when a driver corresponding to any of the devices detected by the device detection section has been retracted by the driver retracting section, acquires the driver by restoring the retracted driver.