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Driver Updates
Update Drivers: (Use any of these with extreme caution, all not by the vendor of your computer can cause you grief) Drivers are small programs that help hardware communicate
with the software. When you attach a new piece of hardware to your system,
you may run a program to install the drivers or windows may just recognize you
have installed new hardware and will go on the internet to get the drivers.
Over time these drivers become out of date. Running out of date drivers is
not a security issue but it may cause some performance problems and occasionally
even lead to crashes. Some drivers like for video cards seem to be updated
all the time, even weekly, others rarely. I suspect the frequent updates
to video drivers is only an issue for those playing leading edge video games. Windows update which you are bound to be running anyway
updates some drivers safely.
By far, the best driver update procedures are supplied by the vender of your computer. I have a couple of Dells and Dell has a not particularly user friendly system. If you have a dell look for a program in your Dell folder of programs called Dell update. Run it to take care of the easy problems. Now go to Dell.com, select Support then drivers and downloads. Now select Detect PC or enter service tag. Then Select "detect drivers" Select download and install for any it finds. It also lists a bunch of other drivers down below. They are probably ones already installed. Lenovo has a program called "Lenovo Vantage" which is simaler. Other manufactures probably have a similar system.
I would only recomend useing it with a computer that does not have a company behind it such as home built ones. The risk is just too grate otherwise.
Iolo System Mechanic does lots of things to speed up your PC, one of which used to be checking for outdated drivers. Click HERE to see a full description. DriverMax found twice as many drivers that needed updating compared to AVG Driver updater. At least part of this higher count was due to false positives. It updates a driver with the version already there. This is harmless. System Mechanic has the advantage that it does a lot of additional things so there is merit in using it. It may not find as many but it gets most of them and is more versatile. AVG found a third more drivers to check on my system compared to DriverMax but DriverMax found 4 that needed updating that AVG did not find. When I tried to see if the updates were really required by going to the vender's web site in 2 of them that I could identify, I could not make sense of the suggested updates. I am not certain what this means other than be a little suspicious of all driver updaters. I did the updates and everything works fine, just like before I updated. DriverMax is what I am currently using as my main driver updater but keep in mind with any of them, aside from my very underpowered newest computer, it has never made a detectible difference.
Recommendation: Run Driver Max without paying for anything. You will then see how many drivers need updating. 20 is not a large number for a computer 5 or more years old. When you see the number, you can decide whether you want to struggle through the free version or not. Note that once you update all, you will have more needing updating at a rate around 1 or 2 a month. Obviously these are not too critical, typically video drivers for the latest games. Do not expect significant help by updating your drivers.
This is typically a feel good exercise like running a registry cleaner. I
have updated drivers on about 6 machines and only noticed an improvement on one,
a very under powered computer about 2 years old. If you run things like
high performance recently released games, the story could be different.
Video drivers seem to be updated all the time and I suspect it is to keep up
with new games. |
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