Ever been so overeager to install a new software or a new gadget that you end up having an unstable system? Ever been greeted by the blue-screen of death after a program or driver upgrade? Then first, DO NOT PANIC, for there are some steps you could do to remedy the situation and pulling out all your hair won’t do you any good for sure. If you are using Xp, then system restore would be a good thing to do and should you have a recent back-up or restore point, it would mostly revert the damage you may have inadvertently done to your computer system. But this XP feature has to be enabled first so to be sure you prevent catastrophe in the event of incompatibility issues, then do a restore point before you do anything (the situation presented earlier). Having a device that suddenly fails can be resolved by rolling back the driver for that specific device to restore proper operation.
There are even cases of erroneous versions of drivers being installed that can render a device unusable to the extent it seems lost. Keep a straight end and do troubleshooting from the bottom up, tracing back what you did till you got to the point when your system became unstable. Have important documents stored in your computer? Then best have a thumb drive where you can safely keep copies of them in case of such problems. This way, you can continue your work while you resolve the problem on another computer.