Do you update drivers and how?

Discussion in 'polls' started by beethoven, May 21, 2016.

?

Do you update drivers regularly? If you do - how?

  1. No, if it aint' broke, don't fix it

    21 vote(s)
    35.0%
  2. Yes, but only if something is not working as expected

    15 vote(s)
    25.0%
  3. Yes, I always want to have the latest drivers and use windows update

    3 vote(s)
    5.0%
  4. Yes, I always want to have the latest drivers and use the vendor's site

    11 vote(s)
    18.3%
  5. Yes, I always want to have the latest drivers and use some software or general website for checking

    10 vote(s)
    16.7%
  1. beethoven

    beethoven Registered Member

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    Just wondering if you frequently check your drivers and update and if you do so, whether or not you use windows update (optional) or other specified sites/software.
     
  2. syrinx

    syrinx Registered Member

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    I update less but my secondary folder of bookmarks is to the driver pages of my hardware. I check there and update *at will* when I see something I like.
     
  3. Krusty

    Krusty Registered Member

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    I allow Win10 to update my drivers, and so far no problems. The manufacturers no longer support my machines so no new updates, same for my graphics cards.
     
  4. roger_m

    roger_m Registered Member

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    I use a number of programs, to update drivers. However, the one I recommend is Driver Booster. It's free, works very well, and can download and install all updated and missing drivers with just one click.

    I like it a lot as it automaitcally updates the drivers, and it is very rare for it to install and incompatible driver. There is a paid version which offers faster driver downloads, a slighlty larger driver database, and a few for features. The Paid Pro version is often available as a giveaway on the various software giveaway sites. However, even the free version works very well.

    Snail Driver, is also worth a look at. It is still in beta, but does work well, and the developer is very helpful, and quick to respond to bug reports.

    It's worth nothing that a computer vendor's website, will mostly have outdated drivers for download. Most manfactuers will stop providing driver update around 6 months after they release a computer, even though the actual componet vendors will still be releasing new drivers long after then. For example, I still get driver updates with driver update software for my 8 year old laptop.
     
  5. chrcol

    chrcol Registered Member

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    my rule is to stick with drivers that are known to work. I will then only change if I know if they are known to be 'significantly' better performing or to fix a nasty bug that I have.

    For new hardware where I have no previous experience of drivers, I will first try whatever is preinstalled on the OS, if not I just grab the latest stable version and see what happens. I think this rule especially applies for sound and graphics drivers.

    I also stay away from driver manager software. I will either install driver via its own installer, or extract the drivers and install via device manager.
     
  6. guest

    guest Guest

    update from vendors site, clean install , reboot.
     
  7. TairikuOkami

    TairikuOkami Registered Member

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    I use Driver Easy for checking and download it elsewhere, when possible. Windows Update drivers are severely outdated and manufacturer hardly ever offer the latest drivers, some are also well hidden, so there is no way to find them without a driver updater or painstakingly searching device ID.
     

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  8. Overkill

    Overkill Registered Member

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    No, if it aint' broke, don't fix it
     
  9. blacknight

    blacknight Registered Member

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    Yes, but only if something is not working as expected: In my experience, updating drives doesn't improve the system, and sometimes it produce issues.
     
  10. roger_m

    roger_m Registered Member

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    @blacknight It has been my experience too over many years of reguarly using driver update and 10s of PCs that updating drives rarely improves system performance. On the other hand, it is rare of Driver Booster to cause any problems, so I just let it install any driver update and missing driver it finds.

    A few days ago I solved some performance issues by updating the storage controller driver on a PC. A few weeks back updating the TV tuner driver on a laptop made the system run so badly it was barely usable. In both of these cases I was using two different driver update programs, and not Driver Booster.
     
  11. Amanda

    Amanda Registered Member

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    I keep Windows fully up-to-date and also go to amd.com to update my video drivers.
     
  12. chrcol

    chrcol Registered Member

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    I found actually some drivers are on windows update only, this seems especially the case with intel drivers. I dont get why people use driver software, its not a big task to check a vendor's site, it also isnt a urgent thing to always have the latest driver.
     
  13. roger_m

    roger_m Registered Member

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    It's much quicker and easier to use software to do that, and that's why I've been using driver update software for the last 12 years. It's often not that important to update drivers, but I like to do it anyway. Also, I find it very useful to install missing drivers.
     
  14. blacknight

    blacknight Registered Member

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    Sure. I wrote in my experience because we know that the same OS - Windows especially - have not the same behavior for all users. Sometimes I had issues updating Nvidia drivers, for example.
     
  15. ArchiveX

    ArchiveX Registered Member

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    +1 :thumb:
     
  16. TairikuOkami

    TairikuOkami Registered Member

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    Because as I said, vendor never lists all the drivers, eg for laptop, I could not figure out, what driver was missing, it was something CPU related. Among other things, AMD SATA driver refused to install when using setup, thanks to the software I have found out, that it has to be updated manually. Latest driver sometimes fix things, people do not even know, that are caused by a bad driver, like a memory leak, crashing software, BSOD, etc.
     
  17. Krysis

    Krysis Registered Member

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    No!
    Experimented with updating my laptop drivers some years ago (using various programs, plus manufacturers web sites) – and the experience confirmed (to me) how erratic, meaningless and unreliable driver updating was.

    Maybe if you have specialist hardware added to your computer, a need might exist to keep embedded drivers updated, but not for 'standard' systems such as mine (many of my Ms drivers date back to 2006!)
     
  18. ance

    ance formerly: fmon

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    No, never touch a running system.
     
  19. safeguy

    safeguy Registered Member

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  20. ProTruckDriver

    ProTruckDriver Registered Member

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    Voted No, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
     
  21. daman1

    daman1 Registered Member

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    I get a blocked by smart screen when I try to DL??
     
  22. kaljukass

    kaljukass Registered Member

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    ? * Yes, but only if something is not working as expected
    1. Driver exchange is not like underwear or bedclothes exchange, simply to lay a newer and more beautiful.
    2. Driver is a need to change only, if for some reason it does not work properly.
    3. Do not change any drivers never, till it works.
     
  23. emmjay

    emmjay Registered Member

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    There was not a category in the poll for me to vote on.

    I have 3 OEM systems that have chipsets built by the OEM for that system. I always updated all my drivers when the OEM sent them to me. Now all three are out of OEM life cycle support. For pre-installed OEM systems the manufacturer's website recommends you upgrade only if the OEM offers an upgrade. I expect OEMs have agreements with component manufacturers to deliver this message to users who go to the manufacturers site.

    For W10 (one of my systems were considered W10 ready by the MS advisory tool) I had to use Windows generic drivers but they were substandard and did not utilize or take advantage of all that the component had to offer. It diminished my W10 experience so I reverted to W7.

    If the system comes with specific OS and the OEM has optimized it for that OS, I think it is better to only update drivers if the OEM recommends it.
     
  24. roger_m

    roger_m Registered Member

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    There are two problems with this. I have read that in recent years that often OEM drivers are just repackaged versions of the drivers from the device manufacturers. I'm not sure how true that is. Secondly, typically OEMs only provide driver updates for around 6 months or so after a computer is released. Which means that if you use the OEM drivers they are usually out of date (sometimes years out of date). Often this won't matter too much, but in some cases there may be important bug fixes or performance improvements. Also, they usually will only provide drivers for OS the computer came installed with.

    I've installed Windows 10 on many computers. Only a few of these had Windows 10 driver support from the OEM. By using driver update software, as an example, I've been able to install the needed video driver on a computer that the Windows 10 installer suggested I didn't upgrade as there were no supported video drivers under Windows 10. The driver update software installed the video driver and there were no issues with it.
     
  25. Gandalf_The_Grey

    Gandalf_The_Grey Registered Member

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    I use Windows Update, manual some drivers from the manufacturer of my laptop (Acer) and Snappy Driver Installer.
    https://sdi-tool.org/
     
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