In its 26-year evolution, Windows has come a long way. One area in which it may never excel, however, is with device drivers and automatic updates. The major problem, which is largely out of Microsoft’s control, is that device drivers generally aren’t made by Microsoft. Instead, device manufacturers write, update and distribute device drivers.

Updates Will Never Be Fully Automatic

Microsoft will distribute device drivers from manufacturers, provided that the device drivers are up to Microsoft’s driver standards and that the manufacturer makes the driver available for distribution. Not all device manufacturers choose to distribute drivers like this, so not all device drivers are distributed via Windows Update.

While some device drivers are part of the “automatic update” routine, others are left behind. By itself, this may leave some users with the mistaken impression that all device drivers they need, want or use will be delivered to their computer as updates become available. In reality, some device drivers are distributed automatically and others aren’t.

For those device drivers that are not automatically updated, the user must make the effort to go out to the manufacturer website, locate the correct driver, download it and install it. One key ingredient – letting a user know that a new driver is available – is missing. Unless the user is paying attention, or has an application installed to flag updated device drivers, the user could go for months or years not even realizing that a new device driver is available.

That’s precisely why I use Driver Detective to manage and maintain all of the device drivers on my personal computers. Driver Detective takes the work out of device driver maintenance by monitoring for driver updates. It also monitors the performance of my installed drivers and lets me know when a device driver is missing, corrupted or otherwise misbehaving.

Driver Detective stores a local copy of the device driver, so if replacement is required, the new installation can take place quickly, without having to go out to the manufacturer’s website and download a fresh copy. When a new driver is available, Driver Detective retrieves the new driver and installs it, retaining a backup copy of the old driver in the event I want to roll back to an older driver version.

Best of all, I don’t have to remember to check the hardware manufacturer’s websites for driver updates. Driver Detective does all of that for me and maintains a library of the drivers I need for my specific hardware configuration. Download your copy of Driver Detective today and see what you’ve been missing out on!

Photo Credit: adria.richards, via Flickr