DRIVER UPDATE GIZMO'S

[GLOOPS]

Hi Fella's!   

In my day, when one needed to update any program driver, it was a '*censored* Drive'!    It took ages to find the manufacturers site to start with and then lots more time to sort out and download. (More times than not the journey was a waste of time!)  Nobody relished the idea of updating one's drivers.   Fortunately, back then, there wasn't the need as much as there is today. 

With the advent of all the driver finding gizmo's around today, it crossed my mind as to your general opinion of these programs and if any of you favoured any on particular program above another?        

[reddevilggg]

Never used a program that updates drivers. They only time i've updated a driver is if there was a fault with something specific, which is rare.

[Allan]

Drivers should be updated only if there is a specific reason or need. And you should never use 3rd party driver utilities.

[camerongray]

I've never trusted any of these driver updating programs, they make claims similar to all the other "PC Booster" tools that it will speed up your PC, make it more stable and more secure.  In fact, many of the companies that sell driver scanning software also make stuff like registry 'boosters'.

I'd only ever download a driver from the manufacturer of the machine/motherboard/part and failing that the manufacturer of the chipset the device features e.g. Realtek.  And for older hardware without drivers for Windows 7/8, Vista drivers usually work fine.

You've got to wonder, if a driver isn't  available through one of these sources above, where does the one that the driver scanner installs come from?

[patio]

They are garbage.

[Calum]

They are garbage.

This.  It takes seconds, at most minutes, to find a driver.  You have several options - the manufacturer's website (e.g. Asus, EVGA, HP) the chip manufacturer's website (e.g. Intel, Realtek, Nvidia) and a third party site.  Sometimes the third party site will be legit, sometimes it won't...sometimes it'll have a more recent driver, sometimes it won't.  I tend to get my drivers either from the chip manufacturer, as it will almost certainly be more up to date than the (for example) motherboard manufacturer, or from a trusted source.  I actually usually get my drivers from Station Drivers, because they're more up to date and it's much easier to find what I'm looking for than wading through Intel's site.

These utilities that scan your system and pick drivers for you often bundle rubbish, or can't find the driver, or give you an outdated or incompatible driver anyway.  They're totally useless.

[BC_Programmer]

I Agree that they are rubbish.

The reason is that the task they purport to perform is pretty much impossible.

What task is that? Updating installed drivers. This is a difficult task because there is no centralized database of every single driver and it's particular progress through versions. So usually these "driver scanners" are nothing more than crappy package managers reading from the companies website. It also has no direct access to know exactly what piece of hardware the driver is installed for; some later versions of a driver will drop support for older hardware or even certain hardware features; it cannot know this and it would take a lot of testing to adequately discover.

The second problem is that even if we assumed the task was possible- it would serve no purpose. Can out-dated drivers cause issues? well, yes. But the fact is that while out-dated drivers may have bugs or issues, new drivers can also have bugs and issues. If you are using a driver version and you haven't had any issues, then whatever bugs that driver software has don't affect you.

But there is no way to know if the bugs in the updated version will.

And once you know the circumstances where it's reasonable to update a Device Driver, you can see that any application that essentially blankets "new drivers=better drivers" is either ignorant or, more likely, scamming people.

[patio]

There are a few in Chat that sing their praises and swear by them religiously...
I just sit back and watch how many times they wind up wonking someone's hardware for no apparent reason...

And occasionally you see someone who was foolish enough to spend $39 Bucks for one of those useless apps.

[camerongray]

There are a few in Chat that sing their praises and swear by them religiously...
I just sit back and watch how many times they wind up wonking someone's hardware for no apparent reason...

And occasionally you see someone who was foolish enough to spend $39 Bucks for one of those useless apps.

Yep, I absolutely cringe when "you-know-who" preaches about it.

But!  You can get a drivers scan AND defragment your registry at the same time, just think how much faster your PC will be! 

[Geek-9pm]

Get drivers from the manufactures.
In rare cases, a driver might not be on a North American site because the manufacture of a device may have sold it only overseas. In that case one has to find the location of the company and go to that overseas site.
Otherwise, stay away from used driver dealers.

[GLOOPS]

Well I certainly get the message here fella's  ....  ditch all the driver gizmo's!      Just thought I'd get yer opinions, as yer know I respect all your viewpoints up here!

 

[Salmon Trout]

fella's  ....  gizmo's!

You could study apostrophes...

[GLOOPS]

Whilst on the subject, what then do you all think about Disk Cleaners and Fragmenters?  There are thousands of these gizmo's about come on ..tell me!  LOL 

[Allan]

I don't know what a "disk cleaner" is.

As for optimizing HD's, while it is less important with NTFS on larger drives than with FAT I do it once a week on all drives on all systems. Partly out of habit, partly because I'm *censored* when it comes to maintenance and "good housekeeping", and partly because there's no downside and there is a likely upside.

[Calum]

Whilst on the subject, what then do you all think about Disk Cleaners and Fragmenters?  There are thousands of these gizmo's about come on ..tell me!  LOL 

As far as defragmenting goes, I don't have an internal HDD in any of my systems or the systems I look after (parents and gf) so I don't defragment them as it's not a good idea.  I don't bother defragmenting my external HDD either because it's just used to store things and nothing is deleted, so there's only ever going to be a minimal amount of fragmentation.    I also don't really care how fast it is.
Disk cleaning, assuming you mean things like CCleaner?  If so then in my opinion, very useful, although as with any program you should read what you're doing before blindly clicking through or you may find you're removing files you actually wanted to keep (login details for websites or chat logs).  Certainly saves me a lot of time though and it's invaluable to me when freshening up an older machine that hasn't seen much maintenance, it can sometimes get rid of around 10GB of useless files with a few clicks.