Drivers - Find and Update Outdated Drivers

    Drivers - Find and Update Outdated Drivers

    Drivers - Find and Update Outdated Drivers

    How to Find and Update Outdated Drivers in Windows
    Published by
    Designer Media Ltd


    How to Find and Update Outdated Drivers in Windows


       Information
    First of all, I want to give the credit to my friend Northernsoul55 who made me aware about this useful tool, NirSoft Driverview.

       Information
    Driver update. Sometimes it is a big question to us. We are sometimes confused about which driver is outdated in my system, which one is to update, and how to know all about it. Sometimes we use third party programs to update our drivers, but in most of the cases those dont work perfectly.

    Here we are going to use a tiny program, NirSoft DriverView. It can make our job easy upto a great extent.



    Here's how:



    Part I

    Finding outdated Drivers



    1. Download DriverView from any of the following locations:
    Get it as per your system specification, 32 bit or 64 bit.

    2. Unzip the download. It will contain these files:
    Drivers - Find and Update Outdated Drivers-1.jpg
    Double click the .exe (Application, marked in the image above) to start driverview. Make the window full screen.

    3. Now you can see a long list of drivers. Look at the "Company" tab. You can see that most of your drivers are provided by Microsoft corporation. Those drivers are obtained via windows updates. Our objective is to find the third party drivers to update them manually.

    Go to "view", and then Check the option "Hide Microsoft Drivers" there.
    Drivers - Find and Update Outdated Drivers-2.jpg
    Now you are seeing the third party drivers only.



    4. The appearance at this stage may make you confused, but dont worry. Overlook the first few columns say ...
    • Address
    • End Address
    • Size
    • Local Count
    • Index
    Our point of concentration will be the next few columns. Say:
    • File Type: The type of the driver
    • Description: Details about the driver
    • Version: The file version that is installed
    • Company: Developer/Manufacturer of the driver
    • Product Name: Almost same to Description above
    • Modified Date: The date of creation of the driver. Version date. It is most important to us.
    • Created Date: The date of installation of the driver.
    Now we have to make our strategy.



    5. Making our update strategy. Some things we need to overlook. These are:
    • The drivers with Filetype: "Unknown": No action is required.
    • The Drivers with Company "Macrovision": No Action is needed.
    • The Drivers With Company "Brother Industries": No action is needed.
    So out list is even shorter now.

    6. For the remaining ones .... concentrate on the "Modified Date" Column. If this date is old, there is a scope of update. Let us have an example:
    Drivers - Find and Update Outdated Drivers-3.jpg
    You can see that the sound driver and network Driver is outdated. So those needs to be updated.



    Part II

    Attempt to Update


    7. Now, you need to go the the driver Developer's site. For the Realtek Network Driver, as per the above example, go to Realtek. Get the driver that is appropriate for your system.
    Drivers - Find and Update Outdated Drivers-4.jpg
    For a ready reference of the drivers, you may visit to Driver Reference Table (DRT), by usasma.



    8. After downloading the driver, you need to install it. The installation depends on the type of the driver.
    That's all.



  1. Posts : 24,479
    Windows 7 Ultimate X64 SP1
       #1

    Looks very helpful Arc. Does this offer drivers for hardware that isn't installed? Some "driver finders" do that.
      My Computer


  2. Arc
    Posts : 35,373
    Microsoft Windows 10 Pro Insider Preview 64-bit
    Thread Starter
       #2

    Britton30 said:
    Looks very helpful Arc. Does this offer drivers for hardware that isn't installed? Some "driver finders" do that.
    No Gary. It sees the drivers those are already installed.
      My Computer


  3. Posts : 19,383
    Windows 10 Pro x64 ; Xubuntu x64
       #3

    Excellent Arc
      My Computer


  4. Posts : 25,847
    Windows 10 Pro. 64/ version 1709 Windows 7 Pro/64
       #4

    All I can say is thank you and Northernsoul55 very much. I have been looking for something like this that is trust worthy.
      My Computer


  5. Posts : 53,363
    Windows 10 Home x64
       #5

    Awesome Arc :yhumbsup:

    A Guy
      My Computer


  6. Posts : 3,056
    Windows 10
       #6

    Great, Archie!
    Linking here will help a fair bit :) .
      My Computer


  7. Arc
    Posts : 35,373
    Microsoft Windows 10 Pro Insider Preview 64-bit
    Thread Starter
       #7

    Golden said:
    Excellent Arc
    Layback Bear said:
    All I can say is thank you and Northernsoul55 very much. I have been looking for something like this that is trust worthy.
    A Guy said:
    Awesome Arc :yhumbsup:

    A Guy
    YoYo155 said:
    Great, Archie!
    Linking here will help a fair bit :) .
    Thanks lots :)
      My Computer


  8. Posts : 4
    Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
       #8

    Since I"m having issues connecting to internet, can I still use this to update my drivers?
      My Computer


  9. Posts : 19,383
    Windows 10 Pro x64 ; Xubuntu x64
       #9

    Coffeebandit said:
    Since I"m having issues connecting to internet, can I still use this to update my drivers?
    No.
      My Computer


 

  Related Discussions
Our Sites
Site Links
About Us
Windows 7 Forums is an independent web site and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Microsoft Corporation. "Windows 7" and related materials are trademarks of Microsoft Corp.

© Designer Media Ltd
All times are GMT -5. The time now is 09:03.
Find Us