Windows 7 - Best Driver Checker and Updater tool?

I need to check if there are any new drivers available for my PC however I've read somewhere that Windows accepts any driver so long as it works and therefore might not be the latest driver

Thanks in advance

Greg,
It's better to go to manufactures website for a more current driver that you are looking for. IMHO
THW

The best checker tool is the manufacturers website. Don't use 3rd party apps for driver searching as they can cause more problems when they make a mistake.

If you are not having problems there really isnt much point getting newer drivers. Or if your hardware isn't doing something it should. The only place you are likely to see a performance increase is by having the latest graphics driver.

You will need to visit AMD Support & Drivers and put in yor GPU details

and ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- Drivers and Download and put in your motherboard number.

Note that both sites offer a load of possibly useful bloatware (like control panels and things) which I tend to avoid but you may install them at your discretion.

Manufacturer website is nice, but rather time consuming. For the laptop I'm currently fighting, HP has about 30 drivers available for download, this doesn't count any third party downloads.

Make sure they are drivers. There is a LOT of "bloatware" which HP thinks adds value to the package as a whole (and it may appear to the new user that their machine has lots of good features but in reality the software you use for a specific task has most of these features built in and anything else you never use).

It's a case of just getting the most recent version of each essential driver for the installed OS. Leave the utilities alone.

Maybe. But you must also consider this question.

Whats really more time consuming?


Spending 5 minutes to download the needed drivers from the manufactureres website

Or ...


Tracking down and attempting to diagnose BSODS or other problems associated with a outdated, wrong, or bad driver somewhere a automated tool installed.

Possibly leading to a re-install of Windows worst case scenario.


I would say on Pe-Built systems you are OK getting the latest directly from their site though, rather than the actual manufacturer of the hardware.

What it boils down to is that finding drivers is best left to two things: The users themselves and Windows Update. Usually I'd suggest the latter being manually update drivers can cause issues. Even from a manufacturer website where a not so experienced user might download a driver that causes problems or needs fixing. While rolling back drivers isn't difficult or complex, I still usually suggest just letting Windows do it's own thing unless you're really certain there's a better driver available that's safe to use.