A software that would handle all of these would be more than welcome. There is unfortunately no official one. A few third party tools have been released in the past that have tried to address the problem; Most of them with mediocre success thanks to the amount of devices and drivers available.

Device Doctor promises to do better. The free program scans Windows for driver updates and displays information and download links in a report at the end of the scan. And this is where the confusion starts. Device Doctor mixes update notifications of devices like video cards, sound cards or network cards with internal device driver updates like those for standard dual channel PCI controllers or a plug and play monitor.

The software did find updates for several devices like the Realtek network adapter or the Creative Soundblaster X-Fi audio card. The manufacturer’s website confirmed that updates were available.

It does make sense to check the manufacturer’s homepage before installing these driver updates; At least for the first few times that Device Doctor is being used. There is still the lingering question whether to update the generic hardware drivers as well. I personally would be very cautious about it. Decided against it on the test system but some users who might experience problems related to a specific device on their computer system might want to give it a go to see if the update fixes the problem.

Device Doctor is available at the developer’s website.