DriverPack Solution - safe?

[McDougal]

Hey guys, got a question about driver software.

From my experience, most driver update software is a scam, and should be avoided. But a friend showed me DriverPack Solution. He said he uses it at work (in an IT department) and it works well.

This software scans your PC and tells you what drivers need to be updated. I was skeptical at first, but decided to give it a try. It's a large download - 3GBs. On my newly built PC, it found a couple outdated drivers, and successfully updated them. In fact, it solved a problem I had.

Before, for some reason, my PC wouldn't go to Sleep mode. I don't know what drivers changed this, but DriverPack fixed the problem .

That being said, has anybody used this software? Have you had any problems with it?

 

[bobafetthotmail]

I know it. I never used the software itself, but I use the DriverPacks, open source packs of drivers that the above uses to do its job, and I use to install stuff without having to hunt for an obscure device driver on the net for hours.
Download, unzip, tell Windows to search the driver for the unknown device in that folder, let it do the leg work of finding the right one and bam! driver loaded.

Doesn't always find the driver (heh nothing is perfect), but does cut down wasted time by a bunch.

 

[McDougal]

Thanks for the input, glad to find driver software that actually works.

Now I can run this on the family PCs ......and another question.

Does anybody know if this works with Windows 8? I plan on upgrading sometime this month and don't want to break my install lol.

 

[Dwarf]

3GB just to help you locate drivers? Seems a waste of drive space to me. You are better off finding out what hardware you have got on your computer (save the details and driver download sites as a text file) and then going to the relevant manufacturer and downloading the latest ones directly.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
Driverpacks work fine - you don't need to download everything but I've used these for slipstreaming XP systems where you often need this type of stuff to create a bootable system --XP didn't come with SATA support so you'd probably get "No Hard Disks Found" message -- and if you wanted to load a driver during installation it would ask you to mount a Floppy disk. !!

For W7 these are fine for creating WINPE type disk which will boot and run on almost any conceivable hardware confirmation.


These are perfectly safe to use.

(Note here I'm referring to the DRIVERPACKS.NET site not to these sites like DriverMax which offer to "Find" you drivers and then attempt to CHARGE you for something which is freely available anyway -- SNEAKERWARE SITES).

Cheers
jimbo

 

[McDougal]

Thanks again guys for the replies . I will look at DriverPacks.net but I've already got DriverPack Solution downloaded so that's no issue (I store it on my 1TB external hard drive).

Now I don't have to worry about downloading and installing every separate driver .

 

[bobafetthotmail]

Does anybody know if this works with Windows 8? I plan on upgrading sometime this month and don't want to break my install lol.

The site states that it runs on 8 as well, but the DriverPacks (open-source bundles of drivers it uses to work) don't have a win 8 version yet, so it will probably be less useful (as win 7 drivers usually work fine in win 8, but you won't have drivers for newer devices made for win 8) until they make packs of win 8 drivers, anyway.

3GB just to help you locate drivers? Seems a waste of drive space to me. You are better off finding out what hardware you have got on your computer (save the details and driver download sites as a text file) and then going to the relevant manufacturer and downloading the latest ones directly.

It is more meant as a tool for semi-professionals, as it is pretty easy to keep it on hand and instant-fix common issues. 99% of the driver-scam-programs need a connection to work.
Besides that is not always possible or practical to do on used hardware and stuff a guy brings to my shop. That is, ok I could run a couple utilities and manually search for obscure devices, but with DriverPacks and programs using them it is way faster.
Also, for some oldish hardware they are the only way I got the driver to make the thing work.

I started using them for XP and kept using them on vista and Win 7.

 

[McDougal]

Indeed, it does make the job faster for old hardware. A friend had an old GPU laying around (no box, we didn't even know the brand, lol) and wanted to use it on his Win7 PC for a second monitor.

We installed the GPU, and ran DriverPack. Luckily, the correct driver was found and they can now use a second monitor .

I'm thinking about staying away from DriverPack on Win8, until they release a new version.