FAQ 1: What is a driver?
Driver, or device driver, is a program that makes your computer and hardware devices attached work together. A driver runs on your operating system, and enables it to communicate with the hardware devices you use. A hardware device won’t fully function if its driver hasn’t been properly installed on your computer.
FAQ 2: Why do I need the latest drivers?
The latest versions of drivers helps you maintain the stability and improve the performance of your computer. Manufacturers release new device driver updates to resolve your computer issues by fixing bugs on the old versions. They also add supports for those newly released devices and technologies to the new drivers so you won’t get trouble installing new components or programs.
FAQ 3: Can’t I just update my drivers manually?
Yes, you can. You can spend some time finding the correct drivers and installing them on your computer. But it can take huge time and energy: you need to get the right devices and vendor IDs before you can update the correct drivers. And you may encounter devices you can’t identify or your computer can’t recognize, which can be very troubling. It is recommended that you seek help from a good driver tool to do all the work for you.
FAQ 4: Doesn’t Windows Update keep my drivers up to date?
No. Windows isn’t good at identifying outdated drivers. Particularly Windows 10. It categorizes driver updates as either ‘critical’, ‘automatic’ or ‘optional’. And it doesn’t usually concern itself with the ‘optional’ ones. So long as you have the necessary ‘critical’ and ‘automatic’ updates, it’s happy. It won’t, for example, install a new ‘optional’ update, if it already has an old ‘critical’ update installed. Here’s a quote from Microsoft itself:
“Windows ranks critical or automatic drivers highest. If a matching driver is not found, WU looks next for optional drivers. As a result, an older critical driver of otherwise equal rank takes precedence over a newer optional driver.”
But all driver updates are important, even when Windows calls them ‘optional’. If they weren’t, the hardware manufacturers wouldn’t go to all the trouble of coding and releasing them. Sometimes these ‘optional’ updates include just a new, nice-to-have feature. And you can arguably do without that. But sometimes it’s an important bug fix – perhaps the old driver is causing your device to stop working or your computer to crash. Windows often categorizes these updates as ‘Critical’, but definitely not always.
So when Windows fails to install a new ‘optional’ driver update, just because it has an older ‘critical’ one already installed, it’s doing you a disservice. You’re definitely missing out on functionality, and you may be suffering through completely unnecessary computer issues!
Driver Easy works differently. It flags and installs ‘critical’ and ‘automatic’ driver updates, just like Windows. But it doesn’t stop there. Once they’re installed, it also installs the ‘optional’ driver updates whenever they’re available. And it does all of that automatically, for every device. So you know your drivers are always truly up-to-date, and you’re far less likely to experience computer issues.
FAQ 5: Can’t I just check Windows Device Manager to see if I need to update my drivers?
No. Windows Device Manager doesn’t tell you when a driver is out of date; it only tells you when a driver is missing or faulty. That’s what it means when you see this:
Unfortunately, there’s no flag to tell you when the driver is simply out of date. To find out if Windows thinks a driver is out of date, you have to right-click on each device and click ‘Update driver’. (When you look at how many drivers your computer has, you’ll see why this isn’t a very friendly way of doing things…)
And even when you do click ‘Update driver’ for every device, you’re still relying on Windows correctly identifying when a driver is out of date. Unfortunately, as described in the previous question, this is something Windows isn’t very good at.
So even if you manually update every driver with Device Manager, you usually still won’t get the latest driver for every device.