So Many Drivers; So Little Time: DriverScanner 2009 Can Help

Well, every piece of your PC has a software driver; audio, video, hard drive controller, monitor, and on and on. It is how your PC’s operating system communicates with the different hardware components.

I figured my PC would have seventy or so drivers. Running DriverScanner 2009, from Uniblue, headquartered on the tiny Mediterranean Island of Malta, surprised me. My PC has 132 drivers on it (see picture at right).

Though being that far off on my less-educated-than-I-thought-guess was a little bruising, my ego quickly recovered when I found that only four of these drivers were out of date. After all, I change and check my hardware far more often than even a normal enthusiast.

 Less thrilling was that among the out-of-date drivers were the one for my monitor, and the one for my motherboard’s network adapter. Depending on how out of date those get, you can start to see some serious differences in your monitor’s appearance and Internet bandwidth.

 Well, that depends on how busy you are, how many out of date drivers you have, and your budget. The scanning feature we used is part of the trial version, which you can download here. If you want to take the time and save the money, you can run all over the web and track down the drivers yourself.

For about 35 bucks (19.95 in pounds) you get the full version. Click a button and it will download all your new drivers for you. You can then click to run their installers one at a time. You still have to go through the installation process manually, and since some driver updates will require an uninstall, restart, and install, the process can be pretty lengthy. That isn’t the scanner’s fault, installing drivers just takes time.

Another problem with driver installation is having the computer restart after an uninstall and for some reason, the installer fails to reopen and complete the process. Traditionally, assuming you remembered to where you downloaded the driver (admittedly if you are reasonably organized it shouldn’t be too hard), you would have to dig it up and run it.

Opening DriverScanner and using the “Driver scan” top tab and the “Download history” left tab (see picture) is helpful in these cases. All the downloads that have been made (that you haven’t deleted) are listed, and you can click a link to open the Windows Explorer folder containing the file. You can specify where the downloads go via the “Settings” top tab.