This Free Driver Updater Can Save You From PC Headaches

by Bonnie Boots

I've been struggling with some computer problems ranging from slow response to unexplained crashes, and after a lot of sleuthing, decided outdated drivers might be the cause. 

A driver is a small piece of software that tells your operating system as well as other software how to communicate with a piece of hardware.

For example, when you buy a printer, it comes with drivers to install. These drivers tell the operating system exactly how to print information on paper. Likewise, your mouse and keyboard also came with drivers that tell the operating system how to interact with them.

The drivers for each piece of hardware in your computer, including things like the motherboard and sound card, as well as things like your mouse, keyboard and external hard drives, are centrally managed from the Device Manager.

If you're not a tech head, but an average, everyday computer user who gives little thought to what runs under the hood of your personal computer, chances are you don't know much about your drivers.

Outdated drivers can cause all sorts of problems on your PC. Sometimes a piece of software just doesn't work right anymore, or a newly installed game won't play. When the issue can be traced back to a driver issue in Windows, the fix is to update your drivers.

That's why it's good housekeeping to check on your drivers from time to time and make sure they're updated.

But if you've ever tried to check on and update your drivers manually, you know what a pain it can be.

As I worked to track down the source of a recent problem, excluding spyware, viruses, malware and all sorts of other bugaboos, it began to look more and more like a driver issue.

Microsoft says its driver update wizard makes the entire driver updating process easy. When I did not find this to be the case, I began to look for third-party software to help me.

I found dozens and dozens of companies offering "free downloads" of programs designed to scan your system for outdated drivers and find newer versions. But here's the catch-the download is free. The scan is free. Registering the software so you can install the updated drivers will cost you somewhere between $25 and $39, on average.

I downloaded four different drive scanners. All of them found some outdated drivers. The trouble is, none of them quite agreed on which drivers needed updating. This did not engender enough confidence in me to smack down $30 for any of them.

My next step was taking the list of driver updates those four different scans had produced and start searching through the vendor websites for updates. You'd think companies that do nothing but produce, say, sound cards that need frequent driver updates would make those updates easy to find.

They do not. 12 hours and one screaming headache later, I decided to go back on the hunt for a piece of software to do this task for me.

That's when I stumbled across a free driver updater. It was free to download. Free to scan. Free to find and update not only drivers but applications as well.

TOTALLY FREE

Since I consider free the perfect price, I snatched it up in a heartbeat, installed it, scanned my system and found 3 outdated drivers all the pricey models had missed.

RadarSync http://www.radarsync.com/ will give you a report on all drivers that need to be updated. It instantly finds and installs the correct updates for your computer from more than 100,000 available downloads which are updated daily.

RadarSync has a built-in function that allows you to download all the suggested updates into what it calls a "pack" or you can, if you prefer, download and install one update at a time

I strongly suggest you update only one driver at a time, then work on your PC for a day and make sure everything runs OK.

If you update a pack of drivers, get back to work and discover you have a problem, you'll have a heck of a time tracking down the one driver update that created the issue.

I also strongly suggest that you use System Restore to set a safe point before you install a driver update, or any new piece of software. You will find System Restorer by going to your Start Menu> All Programs>Accessories>System Tool> System Restore.

By setting a system restore point, you can totally reverse the installation of a driver update or new piece of software, restoring your system to exactly the way it was before you did the install. And while your system will be set back, any work, such as email your received, documents you've created and so on, will remain safe and unchanged.

When you start a driver install. RadarSync will automatically ask you if you want to set a system restore point. ALWAYS say "Yes,", and remember, do NOT check the box that says, "Never ask me this again." Setting a restore point is cheap security. You want to be reminded to do it!

When an old program needs to be uninstalled before a new, updated version of the program is installed, a wizard within Radar Sync will alert you to this and walk you through the process. This is another feature I didn't find in any of the pricey drive updaters.

RadarSync came highly recommended by PC world, PC Magazine,Yahoo! Tech, Earthlink, Tucows and Chris Pirillo, the Lockergnome. And now by me. Radar Sync helped me find and install the driver updates I needed, alerted me to many updates available for other applications and made my headache go away.

 

 
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