Patent ID: 7058563

Claim:
A method of loading a device driver for an IEEE 1394-enabled device with a non-volatile memory, the device being coupled to a computer via an IEEE 1394-compliant bus, the method comprising the steps of: detecting that the IEEE 1394-enabled device is coupled to the IEEE 1394-compliant bus; responsive to said detecting, determining if either a device driver or a pointer to a device driver compatible with an operating system running on the computer is stored in the non-volatile memory; responsive to said determining, automatically loading the device driver if either a device driver or a pointer to a device driver compatible with the operating system running on the computer is stored in the non-volatile memory; and responsive to said 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 running on the computer is stored in the non-volatile memory, wherein the pointer includes a uniform resource locator (URL).