That’s why most troubleshooting guides on the Internet recommend to perform a system update that includes updating the system drivers to see if the updated drivers resolve the encountered problems.

Windows does not have an official repository for drivers which means that users either need to visit the websites of the hardware manufacturers individually, access a third party driver database instead or use a program like Driver Magician to aid them in the updating and handling of system drivers.

Driver Magician recommends a driver database update on the first startup to ensure that the latest driver signatures are used in the detection of the drivers. It will afterwards display the list of drivers in its interface with options to backup, restore and update some or all of the drivers.

The driver manager will only display drivers that are not installed by the Microsoft Windows operating system. This usually means that drivers for video and audio cards, computer monitors, printers and other connected devices are displayed in the list.

It is possible to display the drivers that have been installed by Microsoft as well so that some or all of them can be backed up as well. Drivers can be backed up to folders, as a compressed file, as a self-extracting file or an auto setup package that will install all the drivers in the package upon execution.

Driver Magician offers an option to update system drivers as well. The update button will query a database on the Internet for all drivers of the system. Updates are displayed in a list with an option to download them to the local computer system.

This will install the standard driver installation files that the user needs to execute manually to update the drivers. It is recommended to double-check the updated drivers before installing them to make sure that they are indeed newer than the installed drivers and compatible with the operating system.

The program offers additional tools to work with drivers including tools to uninstall drivers, identify unknown devices and to backup or restore the Windows Registry, MyDocuments and desktop.

Driver Magician makes it very easy to backup, restore and update drivers in Windows. The software is currently available for free at the Giveaway of the Day website. It is also available at the developer’s website where a trial version of Driver Magician can be downloaded.

Driver View is a quality computer software that has been designed for exactly that purpose. It will create a listing of all computer hardware drivers that are loaded into system memory. The listing contains extensive information about each driver including the name, company and product name, modified date, description, file type and filename.

The software highlights non-Microsoft drivers and offers the additional option to hide all Microsoft drivers in the listing. Each column is sortable which makes it easier to find specific drivers in the long listing. A search is integrated in the software as well.

It is possible to export the data into various formats including html, text or csv. It is furthermore possible to generate reports from the command line. Driver View is another excellent Nirsoft application that is compatible with most Windows operating systems including Windows XP and Windows Vista.

A click on the scan button starts a system scan which took only a matter of seconds on my system. All drivers are afterwards listed in a table in the main program window. They can be sorted by name, date, version, manufacturer and several other parameters with additional filters being available from the top menu. It is for instance possible to list only non-Microsoft drivers.

One or multiple drivers can be selected by checking the box in the first column of the table. A click on the Backup button will open a configuration menu where the user can pick a destination folder for the backup.

The Restore button works in the opposite direction. The user has to browse to an .inf file that has been created by a previous backup so that the driver can be restored. There is also the option to save and print a list of all drivers currently installed on the system.

The website of the developer is no longer online. You can download the latest version of Double Driver here from Ghacks instead. Double Driver (666)

Please note that the tool to backup and restore drivers is no longer updated, which means that it will eventually become incompatible. Alternatives are Driver Magician Lite or Slim Drivers.

Once the backup of the drivers has been created it can be imported again at any time using Driver Max again. This is great if you have to reinstall your system because you could update all drivers in one go with just one restart required afterwards.

Another application would be in companies that use the same type of hardware on many of their computers. They could use Driver Max to update all of their computers with the latest drivers speeding up the process.

The ‘Check for Driver Updates’ function did not seem to work properly though. Nothing happened after clicking the button that is supposed to check if updates for my drivers exist. It could be that none exist but a short message that this is the case would be appropriate and less confusing for the user.

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