Bit Driver Updater Full Version
Qiana Thieklin
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Yes, absolutely. AVG Driver Updater can scan for outdated, missing, or faulty device drivers on your Windows PC and find suitable replacements or driver updates to fix any issues. It does so from a database of more than 50 million drivers from 1,300 trusted brands. This wide selection puts you in a great position to
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What you'd want to check would be the release dates of the drivers in question, which you can find in the 'Learn More' section for each driver; I believe that's what the Driver Updater actually uses to determine if a driver is newer or not.
Does Avast / Piriform use any criteria other than hardware ID and driver date to determine whether a "newer" driver should be offered, and where does Avast / Piriform source their drivers? For example, does Driver Updater only offer drivers sourced directly from the manufacturer (e.g., Intel, Realtek, NVIDIA, etc.) and are the dates of these drivers an exact match to the same driver (i.e., with the same hardware ID and version) offered on the manufacturer's support site?
Given the number of users reporting that CCleaner's Driver Updater is installing drivers with a lower version number I don't understand how this problem could only occur "if the manufacturer of the driver changed how versions were numbered".
Lawrence Abrams' 28-Sep-2020 article Windows 10 is Offering a Confusing Mess of Intel Driver Updates on BleepingComputer explains why Microsoft intentionally uses an older date (e.g., "18-Jul-1968", "21-Jun-2006") to help Windows Update offer the latest driver when multiple drivers are found for the same hardware device (note: some of these backdated drivers were installed at the factory on my two-year-old Dell laptop - see image below for my current precision touchpad driver dated 21-Jun-2006). The 08-Feb-2017 Microsoft developer's blog Why are All Windows Drivers Dated June 21, 2006? notes that "dates on all Windows drivers are set to June 21, 2006. The version number increases over time, but the timestamp stays put", and that blog article goes on to explain:
"... When the system looks for a driver to use for a particular piece of hardware, it ranks them according to various criteria. If a driver provides a perfect match to the hardware ID, then it becomes a top candidate. And if more than one driver provides a perfect match, then the one with the most recent timestamp is chosen. If there is still a tie, then the one with the highest file version number is chosen.
Suppose that the timestamp on the driver matched the build release date. And suppose you had a custom driver provided by the manufacturer. When you installed a new build, the driver provided by Windows will have a newer timestamp than the one provided by the manufacturer. Result: When you install a new build, all your manufacturer-provided drivers get replaced by the Windows drivers. Oops.
Is Avast / Piriform taking into account that many drivers delivered by Windows Update are backdated? When a user downloads driver updates from the support page of their computer model (e.g., from the support site of Dell, HP, etc.) that are certified for their specific computer model and BIOS is it possible that the date for those certified drivers could also be backdated or somehow mismatch the date of the original manufacturer's driver even if the hardware ID and version match?
There's a program called Driver Booster for Windows that I use sometimes to update drivers that I cannot find easily. Since I switched over to using Ubuntu for my laptop, I just use sudo apt upgrade for updating packages on my machine. But I'm not sure whether that will also update my drivers to the newest version. Is there a program on Ubuntu that shows me outdated drivers on my machine and let me update them?
The exceptions, such as some WiFi NIC drivers, and GPU drivers, may or may not be upgraded with an apt upgrade depending on a couple factors (such as whether or not the package is "held back"). You can control the installed version of these drivers through Software & Updates --> Additional Drivers.
Manually searching for drivers can be quite tiresome, as finding correct driver versions may be difficult for a casual user. Outbyte Driver Updater takes all the pain out of the process by automating both searching and updating your drivers. It scans your computer to identify currently installed devices and drivers, and recommends updates only from official sources, so you can relax when choosing which updates to apply.
Outbyte Driver Updater gives you a hand by figuring out which device drivers are outdated, corrupted, or missing from your device. Outdated device drivers can contain security or stability issues when not updated - they can even cause peripherals like the mouse or keyboard to stop working. Driver Updater helps avoid these issues with regular driver updates.
Outbyte Driver Updater can be configured to automatically check for driver updates five minutes after every Windows bootup, as well as letting you set up a daily, weekly, or monthly automatic scan. These automated scans allow you to relax, secure in the knowledge that you will be alerted to any available driver updates - all you have to do is select which ones to install.
To give you peace of mind when updating your drivers, Driver Updater includes backup functionality. Before updating any drivers, the backup feature allows you to save a copy of your current drivers, or you can simply rely on the automatic backup option that saves copies of drivers being updated. That way, if you ever run into any issues with an updated driver, you can choose to restore one or more of the backed-up drivers via the restore feature.
In addition to its main functionality, Driver Updater checks for potential tweaks, such as reducing CPU usage, extending battery life, preventing PC overheating, and more, which could be applied to optimize device performance and make your PC better fit your needs. You can review the suggested tweaks and apply all or individual ones.
The general recommendation is to update your drivers if you notice any hardware or performance issues. Device manufacturers create new drivers and update their functionality quite often, so updating drivers regularly has a positive impact on the overall performance of your computer and improves compatibility with new software and hardware.
If the application cannot offer an update to a particular driver, this usually means there is no suitable version in the database for your device at the moment. The same driver can perform differently depending on the OS version and components used, so Driver Updater will show only recommended updates based on your system configuration. In such cases, we recommend contacting our PC Help Desk for live support - our technicians will carefully check your components and install the required driver manually.
Driver Updater updates your drivers the same way as if you updated them manually. However, thanks to its extensive database of drivers and special algorithms, the program is able to scan more than 100 devices connected to your PC in a couple of minutes, check their drivers, and update those that are outdated. Driver Updater installs only official drivers made specifically for each device being updated.
With Windows Driver Update Management in Microsoft Intune, you can review, approve for deployment and pause deployments of driver updates for your managed Windows 10 and Windows 11 devices. Intune and the Windows Update for Business (WUfB) deployment service (DS) take care of the heavy lifting to identify the applicable driver updates for devices that are assigned a driver updates policy. Intune and WUfB-DS sort updates by categories that help you easily identify the recommended driver updates for all devices, or updates that might be considered optional for more limited use.
Enable automatic approvals of recommended driver updates. Policies set for automatic approval automatically approve and deploy each new driver update version that is considered a recommended driver for the devices assigned to the policy. Recommended drivers are typically the latest driver update published by the driver publisher that the publisher has marked as required. Drivers that aren't identified as the current recommended driver are also available as other drivers, which can be considered to be optional driver updates.
Later, when a newer driver update from the OEM is released and identified as the current recommended driver update, Intune automatically adds it to the policy and moves the previously recommended driver to the list of other drivers.
An approved recommended driver update that is moved to the other drivers list due to a newer recommended driver update becoming available, remains approved. When a newer recommended and approved driver update is available, WUfB-DS will install only that latest approved version. If the latest approved update version is paused, the deployment service will automatically offer the next most recent and approved update version, which is now on the other drivers list. This behavior ensures that the last known-good driver update version that was approved can continue to install on devices, while the more recent recommended version remains paused.
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