I use various driver update software. Some driver update software works better than others. I find that Driver Booster works very well. It can download and install any missing or outdated driver it finds, with just one click, and it's rare for an update it installs to cause problems. I find it much easier and quicker to use software such as Driver Booster, compared to manually downloading and installing driver updates. Also, they can be very useful when installing an unspporter operating system. It's very common of computer manufacturers to only supply drivers for the operating system that came installed on the computer. So for example, they may only supply Windows 7 drivers, even though the computer may be capable of running Windows 7 or 8. A few things to consider. Very occasionally a device will only work the driver supplied by the PC manufacturer. For example, it's fairly common for card readers not to not work with drivers download by driver update software. It's quite common for driver update software to not be able to find every needed driver for a system. Driver Booster does fairly well at finding driver updates, but really needs a bigger database of drivers. Auslogics/Tweakbit/Universal Driver Updater (all rebrands of the same program) probably have the largest database of drivers, and therefore can find some missing device drivers that Driver Booster won't find. However, the installed driver updates from these programs are more likely to cause problems. Most computer manufacturers will stop providing driver updates around 6 month after they release a computer. I guess they only care about supporting their newest computers. As a result, it is common for third party driver update software and websites, and even Windows Update to offer more recent drivers than your PC manufacturer does. However, despite this, drivers rarely actually need updating. If a device on your system already has a driver installed, and it's working fine, it won't matter if you never update it. Updating video drivers will often increase video performance, but can sometimes reduce peformance on old computers. Update other drivers, often won't boost performance, and can sometimes cause problems. To give some recent examples. On one computer I updating the storage drivers, lead to a big increase in disk performance. On another computer, updating the TV tuner driver, for some strange reason made the computer run much slower than before, which was fixed by rolling back to the previous driver in Device Manager. Also, I should point out, that contary to popular belief, no driver update software will install malware on your computer.
-How a trusted tech site, like HTG, present misinformation of a surprising amount at the same time? Isn't it a paradox?
Yes it is. HTG seems on the whole to be a source of reliable information. But, in this case, some of things they state are misleading.
They say that while DriverUpdate found an update for a really old Intel driver, it's not possible that the curremt driver installed is as old as DriveUpdate claims. They could have taken a few seconds to open Device Manager, and actually check to see the version of the driver currently installed, but instead, we are supposed to believe their unsubstantiated claim. The article also says "Windows also automatically downloads the necessary drivers when you connect new hardware." Of course that is dependent on Windows actually having a driver for the device. I find that driver update software can be very useful for installing missing device drivers which Windows can't find. In any case to say that driver update software is useless becuase Windows Update will take care of everything is bad advice. In the discussion about the article, their reply to someone saying that they use Driver Booster and they've not issues for using it is: I've been using Driver Booster since it was first released, and rather than "not doing anything," it does update drivers. Also in the discussion are some more ridiculous statements: I think that all driver update software has a better database than Microsoft. While the advice that "you don’t actually need to regularly update your drivers," is sound, I diagaree with a number of other statements made.
I use driverbooster too and not had one single false driver until now for over one year. It just works, and it works good!
Only if you knew how many wrecked systems I've witnessed due to these Driver-Updaters; even worst than Registry Cleaners, System Boosters or Malware itself. Downloading the most recent Driver does Not mean that it is the most appropriate one; especially for old Hardware.
I know they can cause problems. I've been using driver update software for over ten years. However, I know how to fix any problems that may arise. I know, and that's why I said the following in my first post:
I tried Driver Easy free, but I don't want to manually update drivers. I'm currently using the free version of Driver Booster. I haven't ran into an issue yet.
Another interesting Article: https://blog.malwarebytes.com/cybercrime/2015/06/driver-updaters-digital-snake-oil-part-2/
