A first look at Driver Booster 2

Martin Brinkmann
Jul 24, 2014
Software
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11

Never change a running system, that's an answer that you get quite often when you ask tech-savvy users if you should upgrade software running on a computer.

This is especially the case for drivers, and here in particular system drivers. Should you update drivers of the Serial ATA Controller or PCI Express Chipset, or better keep them as is and avoid any issues that may occur after updating those drivers?

There is no definitive answer to that. While it may make sense to keep the status quo, your system may sometimes benefit from updated drivers, for instance by improving performance, compatibility or features that the new driver added to it.

While it is certainly possible to search for drivers manually, it requires that you know which devices are installed on your system and where to look for drivers for these devices.

Driver Booster 2 is a new version of the driver management software that automates the process as much as possible.

driver booster 2

The process of scanning devices for driver updates has been automated as much as possible. The program will scan the devices on start by default -- something that you can disable in the options -- and displays all outdated drivers that it identified afterwards.

These drivers are further divided into device drivers and game drivers which you can switch between easily. Each driver is displayed with its name, date of the installed driver and date the most recent driver has been released.

In addition, a driver category, status and option to display details or update the driver is displayed here as well.

You can simply hit the update button to download the most recent driver and install it on the system, or check out the details first to make sure that Driver Booster 2 has identified it correctly.

The program creates a System Restore point automatically prior to any driver installation so that you can restore it at a later point in time if things did not work out.

The settings offer several interesting options. Here you can add devices to the ignore list so that they are not included in the program's driver update scan anymore. Another interesting option is the ability to drop the WHQL test requirement which may provide you with newer drivers that have not been submitted to Microsoft for WHQL testing.

Drivers are installed silently in the background for the most part. You may still experience screen flashes or slow downs while updates get installed. One of the new features of Driver Booster 2 is that it tries to minimize these when you are working in full screen mode.

Conclusion

The free version of Driver Booster 2 is an easy to use program that does a lot of things right. It detected outdated drivers properly on a test system and installed them with minimal user interaction.

It is ideal for users with little to no technical background, as it handles all the hard lifting for them. That does not mean that experienced users won't benefit from it as well.

If your have not updated drivers in a while, you may use it just to see if new drivers are available. There is however no option to research the driver right from the interface to find out more about it before it is installed.

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Software Name
Driver Booster 2
Operating System
Windows
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Comments

  1. Blue said on July 26, 2014 at 5:09 pm
    Reply

    Since your last review regarding these update type programs I am still very wary of using them. Often in my case I rely on manufacturer sites for drivers, and many times these programs find or claim to find drivers that the manufacturer doesn’t even have. In those cases after installing the so called, “updated driver”, the hardware/software ceases to work: which is why I am wary of using such programs. I am fine using Windows Update and doing manual manufacturer searches for drivers. I fear such programs may steer some newbies into the wrong direction thus crippling their machines if they don’t do proper back-ups or restore points.

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on July 26, 2014 at 5:15 pm
      Reply

      If everything works to your satisfaction, there is little need for these programs in my opinion. You may want to check for security updates though regularly just in case.

  2. Giovy said on July 26, 2014 at 1:07 am
    Reply

    Oh I forgot to say that even DUMO and DRIVER EASY find more or less the same amount of outdated drivers as DRIVERMAX (25), unlike DRIVER BOOSTER!.

    So something doesn’t add up here!

  3. Giovy said on July 25, 2014 at 11:37 pm
    Reply

    Well most of them are related to the INTEL ones, which are very important, but for DriverBooster are updated.
    They refer also to High definition audio controller, NVIDIA High definition audio, synaptics touchpad/SMBus, VideoWebcam, Broadcom Netlink etc…

    1. Fred said on July 26, 2014 at 12:33 am
      Reply

      Same thing happens here.

  4. Giovy said on July 25, 2014 at 11:24 pm
    Reply

    Every time I use DRIVERMAX after formatting my system it finds about 25 outdated drivers, whereas Driver Booster is not able to detect more than 5.

    Any idea why are there so many different results among the two software?

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on July 25, 2014 at 11:29 pm
      Reply

      Depends on how drivers are listed by the app. Are you sure those are all for separate devices and not for multiple ones?

  5. gadjah said on July 25, 2014 at 3:55 pm
    Reply

    Thanks Rick! Good tips. But I like it better if it were portable.

  6. Rick said on July 25, 2014 at 3:46 am
    Reply

    If you want to keep the downloaded drivers, see programdata/iobit/downloads

    The .dat file shows the download link and the .dbz file is the driver setup file. Handy if you want to update the driver library you are using without having to download them over and over again.

    1. Rick said on July 25, 2014 at 5:06 am
      Reply

      I forgot to mention .. you have to copy the files out before closing the app .. they are deleted.

  7. anohana said on July 24, 2014 at 7:02 pm
    Reply

    Slimdriver is another good free program!

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