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Driver scanner/updater

frybluff

Likes # 0

Posted April 14, 2012 at 6:59PM

Can anyone recommend a RELIABLE driver scanner. I downloaded trial versions of two, one of which told me I have two out of date drivers. The other tells me I have THIRTY-FOUR out of date..... Ummmh. I am running Win 7 64 bit.

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iscanut2

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Posted April 14, 2012 at 7:11PM

These programs are not reliable and I would not personally use one. What driver(s)are you concerned about. If all works OK then I would suggest that you don't change anything. Do you have any problems ?

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frybluff

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Posted April 14, 2012 at 7:40PM

I, initially, had an intermittant fault with wireless connectivity on my Dell XPS.

To be fair, Dell tech support worked hard to resolve the problem, and eventually decided there is a hardware fault, and are going to relace the network adapter. Unfortunately, in the process, they managed to knock out my sound. They had considerable difficulty in getting it back. In the process of that, they must have tried installing, and removing, at least a dozen drivers, or versions of drivers.

I now have my sound back, but no idea what driver versions I have. It occurs to me I'm likely to have problems, in the future, when it comes to driver updates, if my current ones are non standard, or older versions.

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john bunyan

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Posted April 14, 2012 at 8:12PM

As a general rule, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" If you have to update one, open device manager, select the item you want, right click and select "Update driver software".Like iscanut I would avoid these global update driver programmes.

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Condom

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Posted April 20, 2012 at 11:02PM

Like others I would shy clear of virtually all of the update driver programs. I always recommend that you leave well alone unless you have problems. I would also recommend that you download a little program like Speccy from Piraform (Who make CCleaner) and run it and it will then tell you in great detail exactly what is inside your machine and it often also tells you how individual bits are running temperature wise etc. If you then have a need to update a particular driver you can go direct to the manufacturers web site knowing exactly what you have inside and that makes getting the correct driver or firmware update so much easier and safer.

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