Driver update program?

What is the best way to find out if you have either out of date drivers or corrupted drivers? I have a program called Driver Detective which identifies 20 out of date drives but when i do the updates and rescan I get the same 20 as out of date. Is there a reliable and easy to use program for this out there. I also suspect i may have driver issues with my USB ports and I am hoping this sort of program will enable me to fix this without having to make a trip to a service center.

Thanks

 

i lately found DRIVER CHECKER,its all automatic,even install of new drivers gets under the hood.For me it works,but its pay ware,one licence for 4 computers. http://www.driverchecker.com/

 

Driver magician is excellent.

 

Thank you, I will take a look at these.

 

I just purchased a licence for Driver Checker, I liked the interface and features and there was a 50% off sale. I am pleased to report that I did in fact have driver issues with my USB ports (as well as other driver issues, 15 in all) and that DriverDetective dealt with the issues quickly and effectively. Driver Magician also looked good but I preferred the Driver Checker interface.

Thanks again for the suggestions. Much appreciated.

 

Giveaway of the Day - Driver Magician 3.4

 

Is there really any need to check for driver updates often, apart from the video card -nvidia/ATI- drivers? I find that there is hardly anything new after the first few months of the hardwae being released on to the market. Whenever required, I manually update all my drivers anyway, after a bad experience with Microsoft update changing my drivers and corrupting the NIC and WLAN drivers.

 

I am very wary of these programs.
After just tsting 3 of them.

Driver checker found 3 updates.

Driver magician found 5 but missed one found by DC.

Drivermax found 9, one of these is an update for my wlan which is a vista only update(Mine is a Win XP OS).
Although to be fair to Drivermax when i "display all updates for all drivers" then this is corrected and it shows my wlan as up to date.

 

I need a program that find right drivers for a person who has installed a fresh copy of os without any drivers?Which one does this job?

 

Hmmmm.....at least windows come with some generic drivers for your hardware,if it come without any then it can't even boot.

 

I too had some problems with my USB. Using DC fixed them. But now after updating all drivers. It still says I have 3 outdated drivers. One of which is an ATI display driver for my Gateway notebook. The version number given by DC doesn't exist. And DC fails to install these last 3 updates.

So I'm off to try Driver Magician 3.4. Thanks tony62.

 

I have same experience with one driver.
Every time it download/install it but after reboot still same driver reported as outdated

I have/had driver magician from GAOTD some time ago(note : at this very moment its offered again on GAOTD) but i find it very clumsy and slow,download abort randomly etc.
Alas but others have maybe totally different experiences with it,so just give it a try !

 

Well DM found a display driver. But I have NO idea how to install it. Seems like a legitimate driver with docs from ATI/AMD. But no install instructions. And all 4 exe's do nothing or a command prompt box opens & closes quickly.

Of the 4 updates DM offered & dl'd for me. I could install three. But even after installing in regular & in safe mode. And after rebooting. Only 1 update is recognised by DM as being installed.

So far I'd give both these programs a charitable grade of C-. Mainly cause they didn't hose my install.

 

At least with driver checker its all automatic,anything is done for you and most drivers install correctly.

 

Uh no. DC failed to dl & install 3 updated drivers it said I needed. It appeared to dl them & install them. But it did not.

 

sorry for you, updated my 4 rigs with it and only one driver failed.

 

Have to agree with you Tony. I use Driver Genius Professional and have done for a number of years to no ill effect. Recently, I decided to see if there was something better out there and have tried:

Driver Checker
Driver Magician
Driver Cure
Driver Detective

and to be frank I am not changing. When compared to what Driver Genius has and is reporting in terms of drivers to update the others all get 80% of them but never the same 80%. None of them find anything wildly new, ie, which Driver Genius may have been missing and a number of them confuse things by also reporting on out of date software...which IMHO has NO relevance to drivers...as I say it just confuses things.

So I am staying with Driver Genius...which gets my hearty recommendation. It is not over elaborate, does the basics well and is easy to understand.

PS. Don't be fooled by claims of millions of driver references! Driver Genius claims 30,000+ references and identified more drivers that need updating than those with the larger databases...a case of bigger is nnot necessarily bigger.

 

I use Driver magician for backup and restore , driver Genius does not come close to Dm for Restore speed.
Driver Max i heard provides good updates.

 

I guess it's difficult to make an excellent program like this.

Cause if one worked almost universally like say over 95%.

That program would put all these other out of their misery.

 

Fair enough...but I have never had any reason to restore as a result of using Driver Genius. So restore speed is relatively irrelevant as far as I am concerned

 

This was one of the features I liked about it as well, and every driver it installed is reported as having been installed. Unlike my experience with Driver Detective which never recognized any update.

 

I agree with this, it should be rare that you need to restore so if once in a blue moon it takes 5 or 10 min longer to get back to a properly functioning PC no biggie. The first rule....do no harm,,,,,the 2nd rule.....fix what needs fixing. That being said I think I will take a look at and possibly try Driver Genius Professional. It would be nice if you can actually try the software rather than just have it report X number of finds. All the finds in the world do you no good if the drivers are not installed properly or if the install is not recognized. If its not recognized you have no idea if it was actually installed or installed properly (or is there some way to check this?).

 

Acer laptop driver search yielded follwing results,there is 10 unknown devices (Audio, LAN, FingerPrinter Reader, Mass Storage Controller, Modem, Wireless, SM Bus, Video and 2 unrecognized devices).This deals eith driver detection , and not for updates.

1. Driver Detective v6.4.0.4 ($29.95)
Found drivers for: Audio, FingerPrinter Reader, LAN, Mass Storage Controller, Modem, SM Bus, Video, Wireless.

2. Uniblue DriverScanner 2009 v2.0.0.49 (29.95)
Found drivers for: Audio, Chipset, LAN, Modem, SM Bus, Video, Wireless.

3. Driver Magician v3.4 ($29.95)
Found drivers for: Audio, Chipset, LAN, SmartCard Reader, Video, Wireless.

4. Driver Agent v2.2009.2.11 ($29.95)
Found drivers for: Audio, LAN, Mass Storage, SM Bus, Video, Wireless.

5. Driver Updater Pro v2.2.8.0 ($29.95)
Found drivers for: Audio, LAN, SM Bus, Video, Wireless

6. Driver Genius Professional v8.0.0.316 ($29.95)
Found drivers for: Network

7. ParetoLogic DriverCure v1.1 ($29.95)
Unable to detect unknown device drivers.

8. Driver Checker v2.7 ($29.95)
Unable to detect unknown device drivers

9. Driver Robot v1.0 ($29.95)
Unable to detect unknown device drivers

10. DriverGuide Toolkit v2.1.45 ($19.95)
This tool is very weird. On the test laptop that doesn’t have a single driver installed, it ONLY display a list of 11 unknown devices. When searching for updates, it found a total of 17 updates but there is no DOWNLOAD button to download the driver. However when I tested it on another XP computer that has all drivers installed, it worked as normal.

11. RadarSync 2009 v2.0.0.7 (Freeware)
Unable to detect unknown device drivers

12. DriverMax v4.91 (Freeware)
Found drivers for: Audio, Chipset, LAN, Modem, SM Bus, Texas Instrument PCMCIA, Wireless

DriverForge is a program that will automatically install all drivers from a specified location. Imagine this, you can give a family member or friend a CD/DVD/USB stick with every driver they could ever need.

You can get generic xp drivers here.
http://driverpacks.net/DriverPacks/
It will automatically install all the drivers you need and delete from your HDD the ones you don’t need. Best of all it is completely free.

From what I found out, there is NOT a single software including the paid ones that can identify all unknown devices. Driver Detective performed the best by detecting 8 out of 10. Best part is it can even detect the model of my Acer laptop! You should also take note of DriverMax, a free software for looking the latest driver did pretty well by finding 7 out of 10! The only thing that I didn’t like about DriverMax is you must first obtain a free license code by registering an account.

 

Does Driver Magician similar to ShadowProtect or Karen Replicator?

 

This subject was also covered in this thread.

Nice to see some other alternatives not mentioned there, but I'd still be careful with your choice if you're going to use such a program to scan for out of date drivers.