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Xena Donovan
If you've lost your driver discs, you're unable to find drivers on the manufacturer's web site or Windows Update can't configure your hardware, use this tool to quickly find and install all missing drivers.
If you're a PC technician, keep Snappy Driver Installer on your USB flash drive or external hard drive and take it with you wherever you go. In environments with no Internet access you can quickly get things working. No more searching for drivers after a clean install, just let Snappy Driver Installer do it's thingand your job will be done in no time.
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.
Snappy Driver Installer Origin is a portable Windows tool to install and update device drivers. It can be used offline to install drivers where Internet isn't available. No more searching for drivers after a clean install, just let Snappy Driver Installer Origin do it's thing and your job will be done in no time. The perfect technician's tool.
State of the art driver matching algorithm. Fully portable so you can run it from a USB flash drive. Built in application and driver pack updates. Can be fully automated using the built in scripting engine. Multilingual interface. Built-in and custom themes. Supports Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10, 11.
Since 2016. Snappy Driver Installer Origin remains a free, open source project. Free means it costs you nothing to download and use. Free means it is free of adware, malware, back doors, unwanted third party software and other dodgy stuff.
I use this program for some years on all kind of computers. Now Malwarebytes is effectively blocking this program to download it's driver list. I have to shut down Malwarebytes in the taskbar to let it download the drivers listing.
I know Russian website, but yeah it works good and never had malware installed for years. It just doing a damn good job without installing malware, just run it and you have all the newest drivers on your system installed in minutes. With lot's of information. No ads or anything.
Firing up SDI for the first time is interesting because it needs more just under 37GB of driver files to offer a complete collection of stuff from which to work. Even so, the tool is smart enough to focus only on driver packs (7ZIP files of related drivers) that a target PC needs. For this target PC, that involved just a bit over 3 GB across 8 different archive files. SDI was able to handle all the out-of-date drivers on its own, in about 30 minutes (most unattended, while I did something else).
For me, SDI does the job nicely and keeps my PCs current without annual subscription fees. And because I routinely shoot an image backup before mucking about with drivers, I can say no such update has ever hosed one of the PCs under my purview.
I downloaded the entire offline installer package and put it on a usb drive with easy2boot for installing windows xp. It's fantastic for setting up offline systems and knocking out those obscure chipset drivers that can be such a pain. Had pretty mixed results with Audigy or SBLive drivers though.
some drivers its better to install manually are things like gpu. also sometimes its best not to mess with Raid/Sata/ide drivers as if the wrong or a buggy driver is installed it can sometimes brick ur install and then u gotta start over from scratch.
99% of the time it works fine. there is the odd time that a driver it installs is buggy though and can brick things.
some drivers its better to install manually are things like gpu. also sometimes its best not to mess with Raid/Sata/ide drivers as if the wrong or a buggy driver is installed it can sometimes brick ur install and then u gotta start over from scratch.
u can use it for anything from windows xp all the way to windows 11. not sure if it works on windows 2000 i never tired that. it def don't work on any windows 9x systems unfortunately.
Yeh I've seen Phil use it a number of times.
Personally I like the challenge of tracking down drivers for my builds and prefer to install bare minimum on my builds.
But I get not everyone is strange like me and while I don't agree with everything Phil does he typically does his homework on stuff like this so would think its fine.