Thoughts/Opinions on EASY DRIVER/Driver Updater?

[Oussebon]

I had actually meant to advise people who are still using a updater for some reason to back up their system before running it.

If the advice is to run a backup before running unnecessary software, the advice should probably be instead to just not use the software since it's a) unnecessary and b) dangerous.

Regarding Windows 10, as with Tony I recall Win 7 improving to also deliver drivers very well and in a couple of Win 7 installs / updates I've done in the last couple of years I've been impressed with how good it is.

It's also worth noting that updating drivers isn't always necessary... new versions may include fixes and features that are irrelevant to people. For 'noobs', letting Windows do the filtering on that is the safest course of action to be frank since it's just better at the job.

Also, I respect everyone and will never call their words garbage even when I horribly dislike or disagree his/her words.

I'd never do so lightly. But when advice is being given that will do more harm than good, I absolutely will call it what it is I'm afraid. That's not to say I'm not looking forward to other, better conversations on different issues in the future of course!

 

[ubuysa]

Hello hello, sorry but I have a different opinion on the use of a driver updater:

as we all know or even have experienced that driver updating in many cases could be a uphill task to perform. People with rich computer experience probably see a updater as a fifth wheel even a detrimental as they do have the ability to take care varied driver updates on a computer. Yet for a computer noob, there is not a easy way for them to get around or to learn about except to turn to an auto-updater kind of tool.
Despite that, driver-updating softwares got a bad raputation, mainly because of the bad performance and sometimes the damage to the system. while that could be evitable easily IMHO. For the most part, people go wrong is not having a complete system backup before running a updater app. Thus, make sure you have the latest backups for the whole system before running the app, it is better to use it manually, as a updater is more a tool than a "killer app" that makes it all work.
Another thing people complain about a driver updater is there are a load of crappy and scammy updaters out there on the web, to avoid them, make sure do some further research and read the reviews from different places before installing. Btw, the updater I personally use on my Acer laptop for nearly 2 years is SnailDriver, a rare clean and free one without any adwares and pop-ups.

Cheers:scooter:

You are mistaken I'm afraid. You make a common mistake in believing that drivers need to be kept regularly updated. They don't. No really, they don't.

Drivers are bits of kernel code that interface the Windows I/O Subsystem with the devices themselves. Drivers allow the I/O Subsystem to use a standard set of functions to handle all device types, in fact the Windows I/O Subsystem sees every single device as a file - it's the only type of I/O that Windows knows how to do! Drivers take the Windows I/O Subsystem file type output and convert it into signals that the device can respond to, they also do the reverse of course and receive signals from the device and construct a file type input to send to the Windows I/O Subsystem. Drivers also manage the device itself in many cases, offering additional features that let you control the device or which alter the device's operation in some circumstances. Different device drivers have different feature sets.

Because the main thing drivers do is interface the device, as long as the driver is doing its job it never needs updating. I don't care if the driver is 25 years old, as long as it still fully interfaces the device with Windows it's perfect and does not need updating. There are only two occasions when a driver needs updating:

1. You're having problems with the device, in that case updating to the latest driver is a sensible move because the new driver may well fix the problem you're having. And even if it doesn't getting the latest driver is an important first step in troubleshooting.

2. The latest driver introduces features to the device that you need. Graphics cards often have driver updates to cater for new game features or other new features the vendor makes available so it's not uncommon to be updating those quite often. Many updated versions of drivers are to cater for new hardware environments or new software environments and if you don't have that hardware or software you don't need the updated driver.

It is a mistake to update a driver unnecessarily. What you do then is replace old driver code that's been executed billions of times by millions of people (and is thus almost certain to be bug-free) with new driver code that's only been executed thousands of times by hundreds of people, the chance of a bug in the new driver is thus much higher than in the old driver. So what you do when you unnecessarily update a driver is make your system potentially less stable for no added benefit.

Drivers run as kernel code, that means they run with all the authority and permission of Windows itself, so a rouge driver could cause untold damage to your system or, on the other hand, could hide malicious code such that most security systems would be hard pressed to find it much less kill it. Running in kernel mode is as big a deal as it gets in Windows which is why it's vital that you know where the driver code came from, with driver update tools you have no idea. That alone makes them dangerous. In fact, because of this security concern, in Windows 10 (1607 and onward) systems running in a UEFI SecureBoot environment the kernel will not load any driver that has not been digitally signed by Microsoft's Windows Hardware Developer Centre (WHDC).

In summary, drivers don't need updating at all - unless you know that the update is needed on your system - and in that case you must obtain the driver from the device vendor, your PC vendor, or Microsoft to be certain you have a properly signed copy of the driver. In this environment third-party driver search and install tools are snake oil.

 

[Tony1044]

You are mistaken I'm afraid. You make a common mistake in believing that drivers need to be kept regularly updated. They don't. No really, they don't.

Drivers are bits of kernel code that interface the Windows I/O Subsystem with the devices themselves. Drivers allow the I/O Subsystem to use a standard set of functions to handle all device types, in fact the Windows I/O Subsystem sees every single device as a file - it's the only type of I/O that Windows knows how to do! Drivers take the Windows I/O Subsystem file type output and convert it into signals that the device can respond to, they also do the reverse of course and receive signals from the device and construct a file type input to send to the Windows I/O Subsystem. Drivers also manage the device itself in many cases, offering additional features that let you control the device or which alter the device's operation in some circumstances. Different device drivers have different feature sets.

Because the main thing drivers do is interface the device, as long as the driver is doing its job it never needs updating. I don't care if the driver is 25 years old, as long as it still fully interfaces the device with Windows it's perfect and does not need updating. There are only two occasions when a driver needs updating:

1. You're having problems with the device, in that case updating to the latest driver is a sensible move because the new driver may well fix the problem you're having. And even if it doesn't getting the latest driver is an important first step in troubleshooting.

2. The latest driver introduces features to the device that you need. Graphics cards often have driver updates to cater for new game features or other new features the vendor makes available so it's not uncommon to be updating those quite often. Many updated versions of drivers are to cater for new hardware environments or new software environments and if you don't have that hardware or software you don't need the updated driver.

It is a mistake to update a driver unnecessarily. What you do then is replace old driver code that's been executed billions of times by millions of people (and is thus almost certain to be bug-free) with new driver code that's only been executed thousands of times by hundreds of people, the chance of a bug in the new driver is thus much higher than in the old driver. So what you do when you unnecessarily update a driver is make your system less stable for no added benefit.

Drivers run as kernel code, that means they run with all the authority and permission of Windows itself, so a rouge driver could cause untold damage to your system or, on the other hand, could hide malicious code such that most security systems would be hard pressed to find it much less kill it. Running in kernel mode is as big a deal as it gets in Windows which is why it's vital that you know where the driver code came from, with driver update tools you have no idea. That alone makes them dangerous. In fact, because of this security concern, in Windows 10 (1607 and onward) systems running in a UEFI SecureBoot environment the kernel will not load any driver that has not been digitally signed by Microsoft's Windows Hardware Developer Centre (WHDC).

In summary, drivers don't need updating at all - unless you know that the update is needed on your system - and in that case you must obtain the drive from the device vendor, your PC vendor, or Microsoft to be certain you have a properly signed copy of the driver. In this environment third-party driver search and install tools are snake oil.

I agree with this entirely though there is actually a third use case I encounter which is when a device driver is required to close a security loophole. Having said that, I appreciate if it us _purely_ a device driver, then this is never likely to occur, but as more and more drivers add bloatware and "management" layers as part of their packages, and often no way to remove the crud (looking at you, Intel), then it can introduce attack vectors and some of the high security environments I've worked in insist on at worst, N-1 (for those not aware, this means one version behind the latest release) but ideally even N or in some case N+1 (Beta).

However...Ubuysa and Oussebon are both spot on when they say drivers aren't your usual packages that usually require this level of love and attention.