At the moment in chat a few helpers seem to be advising the use of a program 'DriverAgent'
http://driveragent.com/ and giving out trial passwords in order to allow its use free of charge.
While this software may work, I have a real problem with it being advised before simply directing the guest to either the manufacturer of their machine or the component in question, or it being used as a solution to someone experiencing issues with a component that is already on the latest manufacturer's driver.
To test I dug out my old testing laptop and ran DriverAgent on it, I plan on reinstalling it anyway. It obviously exploded stating that I needed to update 57% of my drivers (Which of course made no performance difference). What shocked me was that after running this (While actively discussing it on the chat), one helper who regularly advises this software states "camerongray I have your results - for "tiree"" where 'tiree' is the hostname of my testing laptop. I did not knowingly share any of this info or even post any links to the scan I had run!
This clearly shows that when a guest runs DriverAgent, some members who have access to the system can read any log submitted (I wasn't even logged in at this point) which includes the machines hostname (Which could for example include someone's full name) along with their entire system information and a list of installed applications. Needless to say I am not impressed with the fact that DriverAgent staff would happily release information such as my hostname in a public IRC channel where I hadn't even consented to sharing the info with DriverAgent in the first place.
I'd also have to say that the software feels shoddy at best - You literally run the .exe file which then opens a web browser listing all the drivers that supposedly need updated along with download links for each one, drivers are downloaded as individual .exe files that need installed manually anyway so really no more convenient than using the manufacturer's website.
I would really like to find out what people think about software like this being advised in the chat as I feel they fall into the same categories as other "frowned upon" tools such as registry cleaners. In fact, the company that makes DriverAgent also make a registry cleaner and some sort of very dodgy looking BIOS updater that are both just as shoddy looking as DriverAgent itself.
As a replacement for tools such as DriverAgent I can highly recommend 'Unknown Devices' from 'Halfdone Development' -
http://www.halfdone.org/ukd/. Instead of promising to instantly fix all driver problems, try to scare the user and charge them for its use, it just lists the full names/models/chipsets of any unknown components in the machine, allowing the correct driver to be sourced from a reputable source.
I'd love to know others' views on this matter.
Thanks in advance,
Cameron