The best programs, however, provide more customization options. It is always nice to kyocera driver be able to undo an error or fix a mistake. Luckily, having a system restore point can help you get rid of a bad driver update or other new problems that appear on your home computer. But creating a full-on restore point isn’t the most approachable task, especially for novices. It’s not terribly difficult, but if you don’t feel comfortable doing it, you can ask the tech-savvy person in your family for help or watch a YouTube tutorial.
After finding out-of-date drivers on your computer, it searches its large, 3 million-plus item database for the latest versions. In addition, it recognizes faulty and missing drivers, and you can use the program to uninstall drivers you no longer need. There’s also a backup and restore feature that can make a copy of your computer’s existing drivers and revert to them if a new update doesn’t work out.
The problem won’t be fixed by restarting your computer or any other seemingly quick fixes. You can opt to delete a driver if it’s unused or corrupted, but otherwise, you’ll need to perform an update. Once the software identified and diagnosed the outdated drivers, we looked at the resolution options each program provided for updating them. We noted if the program showed each driver’s version information and the source of anything new it recommended. DriverFinder is manual driver update software that’s a cinch to install and set up on your computer. We were only moderately impressed by the software’s performance during our hands-on tests.
Smart Driver Updater was one of the best performers in our tests. It found 81 of the 149 of the outdated drivers we installed on our test computer. Though we wish the programs we reviewed would have detected more of the drivers in general, that’s apparently not the nature of this type of software. For our tests, we installed 149 outdated drivers on our test computer. Driver Booster found 91 of them –more than any other application we tested. However, that’s still only a 61-percent success rate, which is far from what we hoped the software could find. For comparison, the least successful program we tested found 48 drivers, which is only a 32-percent success rate.
When you’re dealing with software that manages your computer at a system level, everything needs to be secure, and the sources need to be reputable. For example, if you’re updating your HP printer’s driver, it should only come from HP. It is a big red flag if the program suggests another source for the update because it may not download the correct driver or it might download malicious software. All the programs we tested have modern interfaces, with large, clearly labeled buttons. Many of the updaters can also backup and restore your existing drivers, which is critical if the app downloads the incorrect update. In addition, you may not want to update every driver, so being able to exclude them is important. However, be aware that some programs hide additional features and functions behind a single tab, and you may need to dig around to access the full functionality.
Storage Controller And Backplane Connectors
The first problem is that you could see a particular peripheral not working correctly. An older printer may not respond quickly or at all, or your video player software may freeze up. Multiple outdated drivers could hurt the overall performance of your entire computer.
- Adobe strongly recommends that you back up your system first.
- This involves uninstalling the drivers provided by your PC manufacturer before installing the drivers provided here.
- When you upgrade the Windows 10 to latest version, sometimes the keyboard won’t work or gets jammed or won’t work properly.
- You can find Intel’s instructions on installing the drivers manually here.
Simple Products In Driver Support – An Analysis
Drivers are a group of files that contain information that tells your computer’s operating system how to interact with a particular piece of hardware. Without drivers, you couldn’t connect and use most things on your computer – from external hardware like a mouse or printer to internal components such as the motherboard or video card. One way to think of it is that your computer and a piece of hardware each speak different languages, so they don’t automatically understand each other. A driver acts as a translator, thus allowing the computer and your accompanying hardware to understand each other and function correctly. This is true for all kinds of drivers, though the software we tested focuses mostly on original equipment manufacturer drivers.
It found 72 of the 149 out-of-date drivers we downloaded onto our test computer, which isn’t even half. However, it’s worth noting that the best program we reviewed found only 91, so no application proved itself capable of identifying and updating every driver we threw at it. Driver Reviver did considerably better than Advanced Driver Updater, which found just 48. In addition to helping you update old, missing and faulty drivers, the software can also backup and restore your existing drivers. This feature is handy to have in case a new driver doesn’t work properly and you want to put things back how they were before the update. Driver Reviver is a decent driver update software for novice users. Overall, it’s fairly easy to install and use, and it is backed by the widest selection of direct and indirect support resources of any program we reviewed.
We spent over 25 hours researching and testing driver update software and found that the best choice is Driver Booster. This professional driver update application has tools to help you manage the drivers on your computer. For example, you can use it to update and uninstall drivers as well as back them up safely in case you need to restore them in the future.
Your techy computer friends don’t use driver update software, and you’re never going to find these apps on an IT manager’s computer. This software is designed for novice computer users.
