Definition: 16-bit driver

A driver written for a 16-bit environment. It often refers to drivers written for DOS or Windows 3.x machines in contrast to 32-bit drivers written for Windows 95/98 or Windows NT. For example, when users upgraded a PC from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95/98, they had to replace the Windows 3.1 graphics driver with the Windows 95/98 version. In this case, they were replacing the 16-bit driver with a 32-bit driver.