Your Favorite Software Driver

[thetechguy]

SlimDrivers for sure. It's a pain to go the the manufacturer because sometimes they won't have the model listed on older computers, etc. It's much easier to use a website or a program that will get the right drivers for your machine from the separate hardware sites. Never trust the computer makers drivers. Either use software or go to individual sites for every part. Also I never trust Windows Update either. To each his own.

 

[Littlebits]

SlimDrivers for sure. It's a pain to go the the manufacturer because sometimes they won't have the model listed on older computers, etc. It's much easier to use a website or a program that will get the right drivers for your machine from the separate hardware sites. Never trust the computer makers drivers. Either use software or go to individual sites for every part. Also I never trust Windows Update either. To each his own.

It is actual very rare for older computers and older hardware to need driver updates. Driver updates are usually only developed for newer hardware, even hardware less than one year old may never need any driver updates.

If have bought brand new hardware that still use the original drivers that was included because newer drivers did not support them.

If you can't find driver updates on your manufacture website and the hardware still works, it is more than likely you don't need a new driver.

Installing new drivers with driver updater software will not give you any benefits unless you can read the changelogs of updates and see if it even applies to your hardware, what improvements were made, etc. Changelogs are only posted on manufacture websites.

As I stated before each system may only support certain drivers, you can't apply the same driver updates to all systems and expect to get good results the way that driver updater software tries to do.

Enjoy!!

 

[illumination]

If im starting over "especially laptop, i find the wifi driver first and have it on hand.. Once the OS is on, i manually install the wifi driver, the run windows updates, as they will find most of the drivers for you.. After that, i then go to the manufacture's website to fill in what was not installed by windows updates, or update the ones that were..

 

[justmad]

I have little faith in Windows Update. Decent Third party software can do the job better than windows update.

SlimDrivers for sure. It's a pain to go the the manufacturer because sometimes they won't have the model listed on older computers, etc. It's much easier to use a website or a program that will get the right drivers for your machine from the separate hardware sites. Never trust the computer makers drivers. Either use software or go to individual sites for every part. Also I never trust Windows Update either. To each his own.

 

[illumination]

I have little faith in Windows Update. Decent Third party software can do the job better than windows update.

SlimDrivers for sure. It's a pain to go the the manufacturer because sometimes they won't have the model listed on older computers, etc. It's much easier to use a website or a program that will get the right drivers for your machine from the separate hardware sites. Never trust the computer makers drivers. Either use software or go to individual sites for every part. Also I never trust Windows Update either. To each his own.

I have not reformatted/fresh installs of windows 8 machines yet, but i know on windows vista and windows 7, some drivers/programs like ATI graphics will not install correctly until you have the .Net Framework in place, which means you need to run updates first.. Windows updates does a decent job detecting drivers needed, as mentioned, sometimes they can be out of date/needing updated, but none the less, it still finds the correct ones.. I have yet to have windows install incorrect drivers for the hardware..

 

[Littlebits]

I have yet to have windows install incorrect drivers for the hardware.

Totally agree, Windows Updates checks the hardware for compatibility issues before offering the driver updates for download.

Driver Updater software do not do this, they just check the server for new drivers whether they apply to your hardware or not and offer to download and install them whether they are correct or not correct.

A lot of users think because the driver is newer then it will work better for the hardware and a lot of times it just causes problems and offers no benefits.

Windows Device Manager has the option to "Rollback Drivers" for a reason.

A lot of times the older drivers will work much better than the updated drivers.

Thanks.