hi, any1 know where i can get a program that helps me find out which drivers are out of date and helps me update them, somthing like Driver Detective but free
Those programs are not worth the money or time to try and find a "free" one.. because 9/10 your going to have to pay for it... or its virus infected. what you want to do is find out if your graphics card is ATI or Nvidia and go to their website and auto detect your drivers. Or you can do this My computer-> right click, go to properties ->Hardware tab-> "Device manager" now if your compontent is not up to date or installed correctly it will show you. If you still have trouble finding your drivers. Stop gaming.
Yes. You go to window's update, look for "additional updates" button. after that, you go to your device manager and as long as everything is working, you generally don't need updates **again** Maybe your video card, but unless its giving you errors, then you should be fine
The only driver that you really need to update regularly is your video card, which are easy enough to find at ATI.com or NVIDIA.com. The other drivers (sound, motherboard, LAN, etc.) typically do not contain any significant improvements other than bug fixes. So, if things are working fine then don't bother messing around with them.
the thing you prolly would need to keep updated is the graphics drivers and/or things that feels not rite... example soundissues etc etc. Else do not fix what is not broken. See now that joker76 posted basically the same thing. *smile*
be careful about these 3rd party sites. Not saying thye are hax0r sites but if you pay close attention alot of times they simply check to see if the version of driver you have is the same as what they have listed. I've found on almost every single occasion i've tried them that 20% or more of the drivers they say i needed were in fact older then what I had installed. The best thing to do is if your syste is premade (Dell, HP, Sony and so on) is to goto the mfg site, goto the drivers downloads area and makea list of available drivers based on your system config. Then goto your device manager on your system and compare version/dates of drivers youhave installed. After that check for any outdated drivers on the mfg site and update them accordingly. Once youv'e done that, document via a text/excel/ or hand writen notepad what drivers you use and their version/dates. Then check for third party drivers (common for video/sound) for updated drivers. nVidia is one for video/audio that often has updated drivers on their own site that are newer then whats on comp mfg sites. That way, say once every couple months you just do a quick scan for about 15 min to see if the drivers are updated or not and your good to go. Plus you will learn alot more about your system. Remember though, not all new drivers will be helpful. Some release multiple versions of adrivers due to configuration issues. So keep an eye on that and if you notice it, contact the maker of the device/comp to see if the new driver is good for your config or stick with the old.
