Snappy Driver Installer Origin Review
Saraid Madnick
I have a Surface Book 2 that is fully up to date according to Windows Update. However, I've been experiencing performance issues. Long story short, I found some people recommending Snappy Driver Installer. When I run it, it recommends I update a whole slew of drivers:
If you're having performance issues, the problem is rarely drivers. The symptom of driver problems is generally that the hardware doesn't work, certain features aren't available, or you encounter hardware bugs in operation.
These driver installer utilities tend to be somewhat of a scam. There isn't really a problem you need them to fix. They fill a market hole for people who think they always need the "latest" drivers. These utilities identify most of the drivers in your system and claim they all need updating or there is a better one available. That makes them look valuable. But the vast majority of what they report is just wrong.
Many of the "updates" they report are actually older drivers than what is installed. They are often the wrong drivers, or a variant of what is installed, like the vendor's generic equivalent of the OEM driver on your system, which has been optimized for your hardware. Letting it do wholesale replacement of your drivers is more likely to create issues you don't currently have than to solve any problem. Even if it doesn't actively harm the system's functioning, you won't see any improvement in performance.
When I used Windows, these utilities were all the rage. I discovered the reality first-hand with many different popular utilities. I didn't have any problems, I just wanted to make sure I had the latest and best drivers. Initially, I just let them run and do their thing, and they created problems that I hadn't had. Then I started scrutinizing their recommendations and discovered that virtually everything they reported was either unnecessary or actually a bad recommendation.
As a general rule, if the hardware is functioning properly, don't change drivers. The only time to look at driver replacement is if your driver gets corrupted, or you encounter a problem of hardware not working correctly.
If Windows Update or your hardware manufacturer notifies you of a driver update, consider installing it. But look at what they claim the update does. If it is being offered to fix a problem for hardware you don't have, there's no benefit to updating.
If you do update a driver other than a generic Windows driver offered by Windows Update, the best source is your computer manufacturer's web site. The OEM driver will be optimized for your hardware. If they no longer offer the driver you need, try the hardware component manufacturer's web site.
In general, you should rarely need to update or change any driver if the hardware is not malfunctioning. The main exception would be if a newer driver is needed to support features or functionality not offered by the original driver.
Also, you should click "Download Indexes only", else it will start downloading alot of other stuffs, I don't know but some of them are not meant to be used / used by your PC. Tick "Expert mode" and hover the option to know what do the tags mean.
personally i don't trust this kind of programs, they suggest tonz of drivers while trust me, 1) the majority of them are outdated, 2) the quality of the drivers isn't guaranteed (will they work for real? are there any serous bugs or security bugs that coming with them?)3) probably Microsoft drivers are mostly basic drivers with some exceptions i guess though they work fine... i am not sure where these drivers are coming from
also keep one of the golden rules in computers "If it's working, leave it be, if not and you have no other option kick it's azz until it says "please no more""and same goes for drivers too, if the default drivers are working, just don't change them... and since you know what hardware your computer has, using manufacturer drivers imho is the best option.
and since you mentioned that you have a poor performance drivers are the last thing i would check and in your case since as far i see your hardware is in overall GREAT for running windows 10 i would check
a) software running, services etc that could end up in a slow performance.b) Temperature of System (through BIOS) laptops etc, when temperature goes high as a hardware security they tend to force hardware working slower for not getting in higher temperature.c)your disk drive health etcc) how RAM is working.
The application is a fork of Snappy Driver Installer, a program that we reviewed back in 2015. Both programs are in active development and it is quite difficult to find out how they differ from each other.
Snappy Drivers Installer Origin is one of the few good programs in the niche. You can download a small version that comes without any drivers or the whole package using torrents. Note that the torrent download includes all drivers supported which results in a size of more than 14 Gigabytes.
The driver-less version of Snappy Driver Installer Origin requires an Internet connection. It can download driver metadata or drivers, and will run a scan afterward to match system hardware and installed drivers for that hardware with the most recent versions.
Snappy Driver Installer Origin checks whether System Restore is enabled in the program; check the box in front of the warning to enable the creation of system restore points prior to driver installations.
All devices and drivers found are listed in the main pane. Information is kept to a minimum on this screen by default. You may press the Ctrl-key however when you hover over a device to compare the currently installed driver with the driver Snappy Driver Installer Origin found for the device.
Options are provided to hide missing driver packs and to "continue seeding after the download is finished". Seeding seems to indicate that drivers get downloaded using torrents and that is verified in the options when you enable Expert Mode.
Check the "Expert Mode" box to displays additional options; doing so unlocks the options menu to change the configuration. Use the options to change torrent settings, e.g. max upload speed or the port that is used, the download path, or add commands that you want executed after installation of drivers.
Snappy Driver Installer Origins is a useful program for Windows administrators and users. You may want to download the full driver package if you use the program regularly to update drivers on client, family, or friend systems.
The application is easy to use and includes an option to create system restore points. The interface needs a refresh though; I'd like to see options to display installed and new drivers directly side by side to compare them directly.
So Martin, have you ever been interviewed on YouTube? I think many of us would like to see that, for better or worse, ha.. Personally, I once helped produce a TV series, but I much prefer staying behind the camera, chilling in the green room, ha..
I downloaded Snappy Driver Installer (NOT Snappy Driver Installer) via p2p protocol and tried it. I had two drivers that it needed to update. The one driver was for the graphics card which it said needed to be upgraded to 4.25. I checked with the Nvidia website and the latest version is at 4.19. So this open source program wants me to use beta? I downgraded to 4.19 just in case 4.25 is unstable yet. I wonder what the differences are between the fork and the original!
I was impressed with the speed of this program, it loaded and found drivers only one bad one in a minute or less. Much faster than I could find them and download them on my own. This program seems suited for people trying to run windows 10 on older hardware more than people with new hardware. Someone mentioned is it better to have the newest driver or dont fix stuff if it is not broke. I prefer to have the newest driver because it often has better quality or more features, at least most of the time it has broad fixes to the previous driver.
The interface is very confusing, you can either get updates online or download a billion of them at once, good if you trust this enough to take the file to another machine and that only makes sense if the other machine is similar to the first.
Just to be clear you do not need to download any of the driver packs. Those are only for updating a PC that has no internet access. You put the program on a flash drive, download the driver packs you want, then put the flash drive into the offline PC and it can update/install drivers for it because the driver pack is already downloaded.
Just to be clear about the way it works, you do not need to download any of the driver packs. Those are only needed if you want to update another computer that dose not have internet access. You put the program on a flash drive and download the driver packs you want and use that flash drive to update the computer that has no internet.
I see no reason to habitually update drivers unless a specific device is causing a problem.This is a sure fire way to hose your system.I personally when i used windows found drivermax to be an easier program.
WINDOWS By Ed Tittel Not many people know about the Microsoft PC Manager application, despite its being available in English since October 2022. One r
[See the full post at: Introducing Microsoft PC Manager]
that made it EZ to delete the source files that had been downloaded to our C: system partition; and, if we did decide to install an updated driver, we did so using the copy(s) stored on that high-capacity HDD + by launching Windows Device Manager
The video at CyberCPU Tech caused a bunch of problems for some people. Read all the comments. Also note that CyberCPU confused the two different versions. Also, read -look-at-snappy-drivers-installer-origin-update-windows-device-drivers/
And, yes, Windows OS could and should have a discrete utility that displays a spreadsheet of all devices needing drivers, the corresponding installed drivers (if any) by version numbers, the responsible manufacturer, and some indication that each is the latest or not.
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