What Drivers to install ?  

medwards,
You're not going to learn much apart that you have to try a bunch of drivers till it works. You won't know why some driver are better match than the others. If the driver is nowhere to be found on the manufacturer website, you'll most like end up finding someone posting their old drivers somewhere on forums. However newer models of the device might have driver which is most compatible with your older hardware but you wouldn't know that.

Snappy Driver Installer isn't just a "click the big button and everything will be done for you" but it's a powerful tool which can be used for troubleshooting many driver related problems. Some users use it in ways I wasn't expecting them using it. The application has the Expert Mode which allows you to have a sneak peak at driver ranking algorithm while providing lots of technical information. You can see not only one driver per device but a list of compatible drivers which are ranked from best matched to worst matched and you can manually pick, say, older driver if you have reasons for doing so.

gregrocker said:

Please ignore the troll.

I'm just trying to help someone. If you have some complains about driver finders in general or Snappy Driver Installer in particular, you're welcome to that thread to voice your opinion. You must have had really bad experience with such applications if you're so quick to discard any applications of this class without even giving it a try.

My application is the only one which is free and Open Source. If you don't trust me, you can compile it from source code yourself. I use Snappy Driver Installer myself and it's widely used in Russian speaking countries so I have a lot of feedback to make it the best it can be. This is why I'm positive that it works better than other applications.

gregrocker said:

A million consumers have done a Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 without a single complaint so we'll wait til a trend develops before considering hawking driver finders.

Congratulation on having the first consumer who complained about the Clean Reinstall method.

gregrocker said:

We serve consumers here, not institutions, which would never use a driver finder anyway.

I'd say that consumers generally don't want to spend time going through a crash course of hunting down hard-to-find drivers. It's the skill they have to use once in a blue moon. It's easier to ask them to launch an applications and request its logs in order to provide assistance based on information from the logs.

I don't generally have time to provide this service(my time is better spend on improving the application) and there are people who are doing it. Snappy Driver Installer isn't well known in the English speaking community and this is why I'm trying to get some traction over here.

You assume that consumers experience a lot of hard to find drivers when following Clean Reinstall Factory OEM. Not so or we would hear about it here. After all Updates are done there are rarely more than one or two missing and those are almost always on the PC model's Support Downloads webpage. If not google can normally find them quickly.

You are also not a consumer following the tutorial but a developer pushing an app you developed, so do not count as a legit complaint about the tutorial.

It looks like you've put a lot of work into your project which is to be admired. You're welcome to help here in our Drivers forum or anywhere else and perhaps your app will find its uses, but please understand why I would not appreciate you interjecting it in contravention to help I am giving someone following my Clean Reinstall tutorial.

I will try your app the next time I cannot find a driver, which happens only a couple times per year and usually on the oldest hardware. If others find it helpful we will pass along the good news since we are only looking for what works best and consumers appreciate automated methods.

Would you want to explain how it works exactly?

gregrocker said:

You are also not a consumer following the tutorial but a developer pushing an app you developed, so do not count as a legit complaint about the tutorial.

I was having medwards in mind, not myself. And I don't actually think he was the first person who complained about the Clean Install method failing them.

gregrocker said:

I will try your app the next time I cannot find a driver, which happens only a couple times per year and usually on the oldest hardware.

It might be relevant. The companies over here tend to use old hardware till it gets broken or it gets so bad it becomes physically impossible to use the required applications. PCs with Pentium 4 and Radeon x1600 are still used by engineers to develop weapons capable of downing passenger planes. Unfortunately it doesn't take much to develop such a weapon.

gregrocker said:

Would you want to explain how it works exactly?

First time users generally don't have problems with getting used to it. Advanced users integrate it in their automated solutions and are getting familiar with how driver ranking works which enable them to make informed decision on which drivers they should use. You also can learn more about driver ranking by having a closer look at informational popups.

Hi Greg,

Your two replies yesterday solved my last remaining driver (SM bus controller) problem. Another 10 minute solution.

I like the kind where you think about it, research it, learn about it, check it out all day, and then the actual fix takes 10 minutes. That's my kind of fix.

Thanks again.

Mike E

Thanks Mike.

I like the kind of user who is eager to learn how his/her Win7 works. It is what we are all about here, and have been since before Win7 was even released.

It really makes our volunteer work here more enjoyable, even if it is already very rewarding being a part of one of the greatest achievements in tech.

Enjoy Windows 7!

Greg