How to Find Tech Support Information

Locate computer drivers, manuals, and tech support phone numbers

By
Tim Fisher
Photo of Tim Fisher, Lifewire GM and Writer
Tim Fisher
Senior Vice President & Group General Manager, Tech & Sustainability
  • Emporia State University

Tim Fisher has more than 30 years' of professional technology experience. He's been writing about tech for more than two decades and serves as the SVP and General Manager of Lifewire.

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Updated on March 7, 2023

What to Know

  • Use Google to look for the hardware manufacturer's official website, like "Dell support."
  • Look through their site for a section labeled "Support" or "Help" for technical help, or "Downloads" for drivers.
  • Lifewire has a list of driver download sources that can help you find the files you need.

Nearly every hardware manufacturer and software maker on earth provides some kind of online technical support and product information for the products they sell. You need to find a hardware company's technical support information if you plan on downloading drivers from them, calling them for support, downloading a manual, or researching a problem with their hardware or software. Here's how.

If you need technical support for a device but you're not sure who made it, you need to identify the hardware before following these instructions. To see your computer information, you can use a system information tool.

How to Find Tech Support Information

Finding tech support information for your hardware and software is usually very easy and typically takes less than 10 minutes.

  1. Search for the manufacturer using a major search engine like Google or Bing.

    For example, these are great search terms to find technical support information for the hardware company AOpen:

    • aopen support
    • aopen drivers
    • aopen technical support

    Once you find their website, use the menus at the top or bottom to find relevant downloads, documentation, support information, contact details, etc.

    aopen support

    Some smaller companies might not have dedicated self-help areas like bigger companies do, but they often have contact information for telephone-based support. If you think this might be the case, try searching strictly for the company name and then do your best to locate this information on their website.

  2. If you can't find tech support online, it's very likely that the company is out of business or doesn't provide support online.

    If you're looking for a telephone number, email address, or other direct technical support information, then you're probably just out of luck.

    See our list of driver download sources for some alternative ideas if you can't find the manufacturer website and you know you need to download drivers.

    You might also want to try what's called a driver updater tool. This is a dedicated program that scans your computer's installed hardware and checks the driver version installed against a database of the latest drivers available, somewhat automating the task.

    See our Free Driver Updater Tools list for the best ones available.

    There's a chance that the company used to provide online help documents or downloads, but since they're no longer in operation, they've taken down those pages. If you suspect this, and especially if you have an old website link, plug their website into Wayback Machine to search for archives of their web pages. You can usually get old downloads, manuals, and help docs this way.

  3. Finally, we always recommend that you seek out support elsewhere on the internet, even if it's not directly from the company that made your hardware. Of course, you always have the option of getting "real world" support as well, maybe from a friend, a computer repair shop, or even an online "fix it" outfit.

    See How Do I Get My Computer Fixed? for your full set of options.

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