Keeping Drivers Updated Can Improve Application Performance

OS Faux Pas Are Legendary

Most of the time, we hear about OS failures, spectacular or otherwise. A new version of the OS comes out and all heck can break loose. Applications, on the other hand rarely gain much attention, possibly because even the most popular applications aren’t as embedded in the marketplace as operating systems are.

When you download and install a new application or an application update, and you’re not entirely happy with the performance, before you blame the new software code or roll it back to an older version, be sure to check out your drivers and make sure that you’re running the latest versions.

That could include the latest versions of your sound and graphics drivers, which can be critical for a satisfying gaming experience. If you use your computer to do heavy-duty computing – like number-crunching or graphic design/engineering work, you’ll also want to be sure that your graphics drivers are in good working order.

For games or other applications that run simultaneously from the hard disk and a CD-ROM or DVD, you’ll also want to check the drivers for your media drive(s). If your old drivers can’t keep up, they can seriously impede the flow of data between the drive and the processor.

Don’t rely on Microsoft to dole out the driver updates you need. Not all manufacturers use the Microsoft distribution option, so you could find yourself operating under the mistaken assumption that your drivers are up-to-date when in fact, they’re not.

For me, I can think of few less appealing ways to spend my time than downloading driver updates. As a technician, I’m paid to maintain computers all the time, but when I’m on my own time, I try to maximize my return and minimize my efforts, all while keeping my PC completely updated.

That’s why I use Driver Detective to maintain my PC hardware drivers. Driver Detective downloads, installs and backs up copies of my current driver, ensuring that my drivers are always updated. I can also roll back a new driver to an older version if I’m not happy with the performance of the new installation.

Driver Detective has been downloaded and used by millions of users who swear by it. Download a copy today and see for yourself what a difference regular driver maintenance can make.

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Windows Driver Maintenance Still A Chore With Windows 7

Driver Downloads Not Always Automated

Even though Windows 7 has automatic driver downloading capabilities – as did earlier versions of the Windows OS – that doesn’t always take care of the problem of Windows driver maintenance. In many cases, you the user still have to go out to the manufacturer’s Web site, download the appropriate driver for your system and install it on your own.

If a Windows driver becomes corrupted, Windows won’t automatically detect this and download a replacement copy. Instead, corrupted drivers still load to the extent they’re able to and cause a lot of strange behavior while you figure out that your driver has gone bad!

In other cases, the corrupted driver causes system crashes and hangs when you try to access the affected device. And some users prefer (for whatever reason) to use a particular version of a hardware driver, usually to avoid conflicts with other software or hardware attached to the computer.

Driver Detective is a much saner way to manage your Windows driver maintenance. Driver Detective can search for driver updates on your preferred schedule, and download and install them seamlessly. Driver Detective also makes backup copies of your current driver installations, so if a driver becomes corrupted, you have a replacement driver available to you immediately!

Driver Detective takes the guesswork out of driver downloads. You don’t run the risk of downloading and installing the wrong driver. You don’t need to remember to check the manufacturers’ Web sites for driver updates, and you don’t spend a lot of unproductive time trying to troubleshoot driver problems.

Driver Detective has been well reviewed by Geek Files and Tucows and more than 1,000,000 users have downloaded Driver Detective for use on their computer systems. Driver maintenance is an unrewarding task, to say the least, but Driver Detective can help ensure that your computer hardware has the latest drivers (or the driver set you prefer) and, a backup for each driver your system uses. Driver Detective can also help you ensure that you choose the correct drivers for your unique computer configuration. Download Driver Detective today and take charge of your Windows Driver maintenance!

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Updating Windows Drivers: When Should You?

The Hunt For Windows Drivers

If you find a driver update for your hardware, read a bit about the driver before installing it. The driver update may “repair” a function that you don’t or can’t use, or it may apply only to certain usage circumstances that don’t affect you. In this case, applying the driver update immediately probably isn’t necessary.

If the driver update resolves issues that affect you, make sure your system is patched to the revision level required by the driver update before installing the new driver. It sounds silly, but I’ve encountered computers that are missing several OS revisions but have the latest driver (which may or may not work properly). In short, make sure your system meets all the OS requirements for a particular driver before downloading and installing the driver update.

If, for some reason, you’re holding off on patching your system, you may also have to hold off on updating your driver until your system issues are sorted out. For example, you may have some specialized software or hardware that will only work with a particular revision of the operating system. Updating the operating system may introduce instabilities into your software or hardware or may render your specialized goods inoperable. In this case, there’s not much you can do except wait until all of your devices can be safely updated.

Windows 7 does allow you to run an XP emulator. Depending upon your configuration issues, this might be an option that will enable you to keep both your newer and older devices happy. For XP emulation to work, your BIOS needs to support virtualization. You’ll also need licensed copies of Windows 7 and Windows XP. Your older devices can be used under XP and your newer devices can be run under Windows 7. It’s not a perfect solution, but it may be enough to allow you to keep critical hardware running until you can find a suitable Windows 7 solution.

If you have real concerns about applying a system-level revision, make a backup of your system before upgrading/updating it. Be sure your old driver is included in this backup. Patch the system as needed, then apply the new driver. In a perfect world, everything should work, but when this isn’t the case, you may need to revert to your previous operating state.

Generally, your system will work best if it is kept up-to-date for both system patches and driver revisions. You can set your OS to update automatically. You can also control which patches are applied automatically and which require your approval. Using a product like Driver Detective, you can also have this automated peace of mind, knowing your drivers are updated as soon as revisions become available.

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Finding Windows Driver Updates Doesn't Have To Be Hard

Windows Can Be Set To Retrieve Driver Updates

Microsoft realized a long time ago that their flagship product had a major vulnerability over which they had virtually no control: third-party driver updates. Aside from a limited number of peripherals, Microsoft doesn’t make hardware. They make software.

The software they make runs the computer itself, and they also make a large number of applications. Since they don’t make hardware, they don’t make Windows drivers – which tell Microsoft’s software how to operate a piece of attached hardware. A problem may arise when Microsoft changes its operating system software. Hardware drivers may not work properly, and Microsoft must rely on hardware manufacturers to make the necessary changes to support their devices under the updated (or upgraded) operating system.

Microsoft doesn’t make changes without notice, in most cases. Security issues may be corrected without much warning from Microsoft, but in terms of operating system upgrades, the manufacturers have plenty of notice that changes are coming. Unfortunately, some manufacturers may not make the necessary changes to support older equipment. Sometimes the age of the hardware has nothing to do with a manufacturer’s decision to support or not support OS revisions.

When the vendor makes Microsoft aware of a new hardware driver, Microsoft can distribute it as a “critical update.” Microsoft doesn’t always get the latest hardware drivers from third-party vendors, which ultimately means that some users who think their computers are up-to-date are mistaken. Windows driver updates can pass by unnoticed.

That’s why I use and recommend Driver Detective. Driver Detective is a driver management software program that seeks out, downloads, installs and monitors hardware drivers. Driver Detective keeps track of the drivers your computer uses, and detects and corrects problems before they become a problem for you.

Driver Detective keeps a backup copy of the most current driver and monitors driver performance to ensure that your computer hardware will work correctly all the time. Driver Detective saves a lot of time and effort on the user’s part. With Driver Detective installed, you don’t have to go out to the manufacturer’s Web site to determine whether a driver update is available. I’m all for anything that saves time and effort, which I why I’m all for Driver Detective.

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Keeping Updated Windows Drivers Can Help In More Ways Than One

Driver Updates Provide More Than Just Working Devices

Keeping updated drivers – and by that I mean installed drivers as well as backups of the latest drivers – can actually save you a lot of time. How so? Life has a way of making a mess of things that are working just fine. Hard disks, for example, can crash without warning. If you have backed up your files, you haven’t lost any work. Most people use backups to back up their applications, but often they don’t back up their system – ostensibly to save space.

You don’t really have to choose between backing up your system and backing up your files, but in the end, if you HAD to choose between one or the other, you’d back up your files on the theory that you can restore the system from disk, right? Well, restoring the system from disk gets you back to square one. (And by square one, I mean Square One.)

You won’t get any of the system updates or patches; you’ll need to download and install those. You won’t get any of your third-party drivers; you’ll also need to download and install those. You may need to download and install several iterations of the driver, including all of the appropriate updates.

If you haven’t been careful, you could lose the drivers for any old, obsolete or unusual hardware you have. You may have a hard time finding the correct driver or a suitable substitute. All of your configurations will be gone too. In all, losing a hard drive can cost you several hours – if not days – of reconfiguring, re-installing and restoring. It’s your basic bummer. There’s no other way to describe it.

Using a driver management software package like Driver Detective saves you tons of time. Driver Detective manages all of your drivers and saves copies of current drivers. It also backs up your registry so you don’t lose configurations. You can use Driver Detective in conjunction with a backup scheme to protect your data, your system, your drivers and your updates. If you have your entire system protected, you can save hours of recovery time after serious data loss.

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More Than One Way To Update Windows Drivers

There’s more than one way to update windows drivers, but the most time-intensive one is the one you should strive to eliminate. For a long time, nothing in the Windows OS could tell you that there was a new driver update. That meant going to the PC, noting the driver version(s) installed on your computer and visiting the manufacturer Web site to check for, download and install Windows driver updates.

On the surface, it sounds easy and compared to say, putting a man on the moon, downloading drivers is definitely easier. On the other hand, visiting ten manufacturers’ Web sites could take an hour. Downloading, installing and testing each driver could take another hour. If the new driver causes problems or breaks something else, that’s even more troubleshooting time you could be committing yourself to.

So, Windows now downloads driver updates right to your computer, right? If the manufacturer made its driver updates available to Microsoft, and if you have your computer configured to download driver updates, and Microsoft chooses the right driver update for your computer, then yes, you can get driver updates when you patch your OS.

That doesn’t always guarantee that you’ll get the driver you need when you need it. If updates to your computer are available only once per month, you might be waiting for driver updates. Additionally, you might not get the driver you need for your computer. You may still be sent off to search for the driver on your own. If the driver you have is the right one, but it gets corrupted, you might still be looking at manual driver updates.

I save time and effort by using Driver Detective to manage my Windows drivers. Driver Detective finds the correct driver for your system, downloads it, installs it and backs it up. It also monitors the driver to make sure it’s working correctly. All of this saves me time. I don’t have to keep track of my Windows drivers because Driver Detective will do that for me, and save me a lot of time and hassle in the process.

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You Can't Always Rely On Windows For Driver Updates

The Cost Of Not Having Drivers

Microsoft can’t be expected to hit a home run each time it steps up to the plate, but without having updated Vista drivers for hardware, there’s little incentive to upgrade for the home user. In some ways, Microsoft can force an upgrade by not allowing manufacturers to ship with an older version of the Windows OS – which Microsoft did to address customer complaints – but that just pushes the problem farther down the line.

We’re at that point right now with Windows 7. Windows 7 was meant to install on top of Windows Vista. The penalty for having skipped Vista is that the user must then do a “clean” install, which turns out to be a messy prospect. Windows 7 came with a raft of third party drivers, but that doesn’t free the user from having to do manual updates.

Having done them countless times, I can say that manual driver updates can be painful. Now, Windows can download and install driver updates if the system is configured to do so and if Windows Update has found (or been handed) an updated driver. If not, you’re manually updating your computer either as often as you remember, or when you start having hardware problems.

I’ve solved this problem by using a driver management tool called Driver Detective. Driver Detective does more than just locate the correct driver for a particular installation. It locates, downloads and installs updated drivers automatically. It also archives the correct driver on the hard disk and monitors the operation of each driver so that it can quickly reload a driver that’s been damaged or deleted.

What I like best about Driver Detective is that it saves me the time of having to go out and locate new drivers or find old versions of drivers that I want to use. I don’t have to wonder about whether a driver is current. Driver Detective finds out for me. I don’t have to figure out whether a driver is corrupted, because not only does Driver Detective figure that out, it also replaces bad drivers.

Not every IT “tool” is worth having , but Driver Detective is one of those software packages that is. If you haven’t already, download a copy and see for yourself how easy it can be to make driver management problems a thing of the past.

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Dell To Stop Shipping Windows XP

Where Does This Leave The Customer?

Microsoft’s EULA for Windows 7 allows users to downgrade to Windows XP at any time, so what’s really at stake here is the customer’s ability to get a pre-loaded computer with Windows XP. Is that such a loss?

For individual users, the move away from XP may not be such a big deal. The pushback on this decision is likely to come from corporate users who have large user communities. The move to XP may require hardware or software upgrades, additional licensing costs, and a significant amount of preparation, rollout and post-upgrade support. Some corporate users have chosen to delay these expenses by sticking with what they have until they can do controlled upgrades.

Even this might not be as terrible as it sounds. The Microsoft Volume Licensing agreement enables enterprises that commit to certain licensing volumes to use any operating system they choose. In theory, a volume-licensing customer could continue to use XP indefinitely.

That’s not necessarily wise, though. Microsoft has already limited technical support to Windows XP SP3 users. Users who have not upgraded their service pack versions yet won’t find Windows driver updates or patches, even for critical vulnerabilities. Next year, XP will celebrate its 10th year on the market, and despite a great deal of user loyalty, it appears as though the move to Windows 7 is happening in earnest.

If anything, Microsoft and Dell are simply applying pressure to users to make and stick with a migration plan. Ultimately, power distributors like Dell will help move users away from older XP implementations toward Windows 7 distributions. When everything is said and done, it’s probably the only way to get users who subscribe to the “If-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it” philosophy of upgrading. It will also add a little pressure to specialty equipment manufacturers to upgrade their product line to accommodate the move to Vista-based operating system support. By eliminating Windows XP and older versions of the operating system from the global installed user base, Microsoft can make more progress in its efforts to bring a more secure, more intelligent and more efficient computing platform to the market.

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Trojan Targets Microsoft Shortcut Files, Installs Windows Drivers

Attack Uses Previously Unknown Exploit

The viral Windows drivers belong to rootkits, which install themselves undetected with the assistance of a legitimately signed driver that belongs to RealTek Semiconductors. The particular attack targets Siemens SCADA WinCC control systems. This niche software is used by power plants, leading security experts to conclude that this particular attack was designed to effect industrial espionage.

VirusBlokAda, a cybersecurity firm located in Belarus, first discovered the attack. The virus poses a serious security risk because it doesn’t rely on an autorun exploit, as most USB-borne attacks do. At the moment, there is no credible way to detect the attack as it is happening, and all Windows computer, even fully patched systems running Windows 7 are vulnerable to the attack.

The attacks are significant for another reason: until now, it was thought that .lnk files had no ability to do anything until the user clicked on the file. In this particular attack, the mere presence of the .lnk file is enough to trigger the infection. Apparently, no user action – other than connecting an infected USB drive to a system that runs Microsoft Explorer – is required to trigger the viral transfer. The malicious files are undetectable on the USB drives, leaving users completely vulnerable to the attack.

Security experts are warning users not to get complacent about the fact that this particular attack is directed toward a niche product. The major danger with this attack is that other hackers can use the same approach that the Trojan uses to target other systems. The likelihood of success is high because there is no inherent protection against this type of attack within Windows OS products at the moment.

This particular attack installs two apparently-legitimate Windows drivers called mrxnet.sys and mrxcls.sys, which in turn install two rootkits, Rootkit.TMPHider and SScope.Rootkit.TmpHider.2. Cybersecurity firms report that infections of these two rootkits have risen since the attacks began, leading them to speculate that the incidence of undetected infections is rising.

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What's In A Windows Driver?

Selecting The Correct Driver

In some respects, Apple enjoys a reputation for “trouble-free” computing because it maintains strict control over how hardware (especially third-party hardware) interfaces with the company’s computers. Apple has taken the same approach with software, and the result is a hardware-and-software combination that’s tightly integrated and appears to suffer from fewer problems than its PC counterparts do.

Microsoft has taken a different approach, relying on third-party hardware manufacturers to create as many compatible hardware variations as the market will bear. The result for the consumer is a lower hardware cost, but Microsoft doesn’t exercise the same tight control over the user’s experience that Apple does. PCs running Windows also have a reputation for being difficult to work with.

The inability of some PC hardware to operate compatibly with other PC hardware has fouled up more than one user’s experience and while Microsoft shoulders much of the blame from the consumer’s perspective, the real culprits are more likely to be the hardware manufacturers and the drivers they author. Many hardware manufacturers take their own approach to writing drivers and don’t place a high regard on how their drivers might interoperate with other hardware attached to a user’s computer.

Hardware manufacturers are often slow to come out with compatible drivers and driver updates, which only complicates the user’s overall experience. Saddled on top of this is Microsoft’s somewhat clunky approach to obtaining driver updates. Driver updating at one point was a strictly manual process. Over time, Microsoft has incorporated automatic driver updates into its OS, but some users don’t have this feature configured properly so driver updates are missed, and Microsoft sometimes chooses and/or installs the wrong driver, complicating matters even more. The upshot is that even though Microsoft has automated the process of driver updates, many users are still fearful of the auto-update function due to poor past experiences.

I recommend a driver management program like Driver Detective for reliable, trustworthy driver management. Driver Detective locates, downloads and installs the correct driver and maintains a local backup of the driver. If an installed driver becomes corrupted, damaged or somehow gets deleted or overwritten, Driver Detective can re-install the correct driver instantly, helping the user avoid problems.

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