If Microsoft would not include support for thousands of devices by default, you would have to supply those drivers during installation. Last time I had to do that was when I installed Windows XP SP2 on a SATA hard drive. I had to load the SATA driver during installation so that Windows identified the hard drive correctly.

Default drivers may be all you need to work with your operating system, but if you experience device related problems, or want additional functionality, then third party drivers and driver updates are your best bet. One example: While it is perfectly fine to use the standard Windows keyboard driver with your shiny new media keyboard, you may want to use the media or macro keys on your keyboard, which you probably can’t with the standard driver. That’s where you may want to update the hardware driver of the keyboard to get that functionality.

But it is not all about new functionality. It can also be about performance or stability. Video card drivers usually improve the card’s performance with every update. Gamers benefit from those updates, as do users who rely on their video cards for other tasks, for instance video editing or recording.

Identify Hardware and Manufacturers

The first thing that you need to do is to identify the manufacturer and model of the device. The model is especially important, as manufacturers often release different versions of a hardware which may use different Windows drivers.

I’m going to show you manual and automatic ways of looking up model and manufacturer of devices in Windows.

Manual hardware identification

The information about model and manufacturer may be out in the open, for instance engraved on the computer mouse or wireless router, or hidden from sight if the hardware is internal. The receipt or instructions manual may reveal information about hardware as well. Still, there is usually no way around diving into the Windows Control Panel to get detailed information about the PC’s hardware and devices.

The following guide is based on the Windows 7 operating system. Users of previous Windows operating systems will however find lots of similarities.

Click the Start Orb at the left of the taskbar and select Control Panel from the menu that pops out. Select System and Security > Device Manager from the list of available Control Panel applets.

You find a listing of all devices that are currently connected to the PC. The devices are sorted into various categories like network adapters, display adapters or DVD/CD-Rom devices. You need to double-click on the name of the hardware group or a single-click on the arrow.

Sometimes, that is all you need to do to identify the hardware model right away. If you look at the screenshot above, you see that my computer has an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 display adapter. Now, this does not really tell you anything about the manufacturer of the card, only that it is based on NVIDIA hardware. This is different from other hardware like the devices listed under disk drives, where you see the manufacturer directly.

Display drivers are special, as you often have the choice between NVIDIA’s reference drivers that get updated frequently, or drivers by the card’s manufacturer who may not update the drivers that frequently but sometimes have additional features built-in that are not available if the reference drivers are installed.

Keep the device manager window open and fire up a web browser to find and download the drivers.

Driver Download

I tend to install the reference drivers because of the frequent updates. Now that you have found the name and model of your hardware you need to locate the latest drivers on the Internet. A good start is an Internet search for that name and model number followed by drivers, for instance Geforce GTX 470 drivers. You can also search for manufacturer and drivers, for instance Logitech drivers or Ati drivers. Another possibility is to search for the homepage of the manufacturer instead, e.g. Samsung homepage or Intel homepage.

The domain names usually include the company name, e.g. nvidia.com or logitech.com. These sites usually link to drivers on their homepage. If you cannot find a drivers link try the downloads section or support section instead.

Locate the driver for your device and operating system, and compare its version number to the version installed on your computer. Sometimes you do not know which driver version you have installed. You can find that out under the Drivers tab of the device properties.

Compare the driver version and date to the latest version displayed on the driver download website. If the version on the website appears to be newer, download it to your computer.

You can alternatively use a third party website like Driver Zone to locate the right device drivers for your hardware.

Install driver

You can simply double-click on the downloaded driver to install it on the system. That’s usually all it takes. Some cautious users may want to uninstall the active device driver first before they install the new one. This can be done by selecting Driver > Uninstall from the hardware’s properties dialog in the Windows Device Manager. Sometimes you may need to restart the computer after you have installed the new driver.

Automatic Options

Software can assist you greatly when it comes to updating device drivers. A free program like Hardware Info 32 displays valuable information that the Windows device manager does not. You get information like the name of the company that sold the video card, or the exact motherboard version.

This makes it a lot easier to find the appropriate drivers on the Internet.

There is also software that can scan the computer for hardware and drivers, and compare those drivers versions to an online database. Device Doctor is a free application that can do that. Just start the program, select Scan from the list and you get a list of available driver updates with download buttons.

Some words of advice though. You should compare the drivers that are offered by applications like Device Doctor with the version and model installed on your computer to avoid installing the wrong or outdated drivers. I’d also refrain from installing chipset drivers this way.

Let me know how you update your hardware drivers in Windows.

The first type is every now and then updated by Microsoft, while the second type needs to be updated manually. That’s a huge problem, as outdated drivers can result in incompatibilities or other technical problems.

Just like there is no option to scan for third party software updates in Windows, there is no option to scan for third party driver updates. A cloud based community driven solution would be helpful for many users.

Until Microsoft decides to create such a feature, it is up to third party software to fill the gap.

SlimDrivers, is a free software to check for driver updates in Windows. The program is developed by the same company that created yesterday’s SlimCleaner.

Both programs are offered as beta versions, and it may be that both will turn commercial in the future. A lack of information on the developer website, and registration links in the programs that currently lead to 404 pages seem to confirm that.

SlimDrivers is compatible with Windows Vista and Windows 7. The software displays PC overview information on startup. A click on the big Start Scan button scans the system for hardware and installed system drivers.

slimdrivers

These information are then complied and presented to the user. More precisely, the hardware that is not using the latest driver is displayed, with options to download the updated driver directly from within the software.

An ignore option is available in case false positives are detected by the program. Those will then be ignored in future scans.

The program scans not only for drivers but also for Windows Updates and program updates. SlimDrivers displays a prompt to create a System Restore point before updates are downloaded and installed.

SlimDrivers can furthermore backup and restore installed drivers. Those options are displayed in the header icon bar. All devices that are currently connected to the computer are displayed in the driver backup window. Here it is possible to select some or all drivers for the backup.

driver backup

Backups are created in a way that every driver can be installed without the software. Each backed up driver is stored in its own folder from where it can be copied or installed.

The software can also be used to uninstall drivers from the computer system, and to schedule automatic checks for driver updates.

SlimDrivers is a professional looking software program to update, backup, restore and uninstall drivers in the Windows operating system. The beta version stopped responding on one of our test systems whenever a scan was initiated. It ran fine on another system though.

SlimDrivers is available for download at the developer website.

Software that can scan the system for outdated drivers has become popular in the last years. They are usually powered by a huge driver database on the Internet that will be used to compare the installed drivers and devices with the latest versions in the database.

This automatic approach offers several advantages but can lead to problems as well. The main advantage is obviously the uncomplicated use. Users of all experience levels can scan their computer system easily and update the drivers that are found to be outdated by the scanner.

The disadvantages is a chance for false positives if the device is not identified correctly and that updates may be missing since they need to be added to the database before they can be displayed to the user.

Driver Easy has recently been updated. The software is easy to use and will perform a thorough scan of the computer drivers and devices.

Each computer driver that is not up to date is displayed in the results window after the scan with options to download and install the driver right from the program’s interface. That’s a different behavior when compared to many other driver updaters who usually redirect the user to a website where the computer driver can be downloaded.

It is recommended to verify the drivers that are displayed as updates before they are installed to avoid installing incompatible or older drivers on the computer system. The software found several drivers that needed updating on a test system but failed to find the last driver update for the Ati Radeon video card.

Driver Easy is a very comfortable software that can be used as a first step to update a computer system’s device drivers. The software is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. The download is provided at the developer’s website.

Ma-Config is a French service that is available in English as well (with some leftovers that are not translated).The service can be used with an ActiveX plugin directly in Internet Explorer or as a download for other web browsers.

The service itself is run in a web browser. The system’s configuration will be detected upon the user’s request and a summary of the hardware components that have been discovered will be displayed after the system scan.

A click on the Find button after clicking on the Find The Drivers button at the top will search the database of the service for newer drivers. Everything that is found during that process will be displayed in an overview afterwards.

The devices were identified correctly by the service. Most of the drivers that have been suggested on the other hand did not need to be installed. The service did for instance suggest a beta version of the Ati Radeon Catalyst driver although the final driver was already installed on the system. That could have been a problem with Ati’s versioning however as the beta driver used a newer driver packaging version than the final driver.

It is therefor recommended to check the suggested drivers before installing them. This in turn makes the service less comfortable to use. Some users might prefer to perform a manual search for updated drivers instead (which they have to do anyway when analysing the findings of the program).

Ma-Config might come in handy on the other hand if drivers cannot be find manually. The computer hardware list can be exported into a pdf file that can be downloaded to the computer system.

Ma-Config is not the only service that tries to make the Windows driver updating process more comfortable. Device Doctor, 3DP Chip or Driver Max are just a few of the alternatives. (via Make Use Of)

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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Driver Max 3