Ok, so on my WIndows machines, I've always manage to come across things not working quite right and had to go hunt down drivers for something or other. Sometimes it can be a pain to find them too, especially on older hardware. I had particular trouble to find drivers for my legacy Texas Instruments firewire card to run my older MOTU audio interface on a Windows 10 machine (the MOTU drivers are fine, I'm talking about the TI PCI card drivers here).

Anyway, since then, I've been using IObit's Driver Booster every week or two to just check and update drivers. It will auto-find latest drivers and then I can select which to update. I generally avoid updating ones for critical gear this way, using the official paths, e.g. NVidia site for GPU drivers.

Anyway, got me wondering, there's a ton of driver update apps out there, so was wondering what everyone else uses and what's the 'best' and why?

 

I always do it manually(to see what´s going in my computer), and wait a little bit to see if any other is having issues with updates

 

I use Snappy driver installer origin, free and portable

https://www.glenn.delahoy.com/snappy-driver-installer-origin/

 

This thing makes installing drivers in Windows much easier indeed. When you just want to do it quickly. If you want to do it properly, though, Legotron's method is the way to go. It depends on how important is the OS you're updating. Do you plan on using it for serious production and stuff like that. For gaming I would just install the latest drivers just like everybody else.

SDI is a life saver for Windows, generally.

It's so much easier in Linux... just apt get upgrade. lol I cringe when I have to install drivers in Windows and turn off/disable/adjust a bunch of things. That's why I'm using PhoenixOS lite and adjusted Windows. It saves a lot of time and patience I don't have any more.

 

snappy driver generally works. without any search.
but not allways, sometime it need uninstall the not working driver and use windows update to install the compatible one.
i saw this for a mousepad on a acer laptop. the os can solve it.

firewire is special, because it use chipset generic or labeled (texas instruments,via)
i add the case of firmware presonus console never updating because of generic chipset.
some laptop where lucky, and others unlucky. so the bug was linked to hardware componant.
the sad joke.

your TI PCI is made for windows 7, so it can be not stable with win10 or 11.
i have a M Audio firewire 410 sound card same style (win 8) that usually need 2 boot to launch normally on win10.
the first load is not allways lucky. if it crash it can need another start process. i never resolved that shit from driver update or reinstall with older os options. it works in this state, with a reboot more.

 

It's cos of shit drivers and shit device detection to get correct drivers is why I had to start looking at alternatives to get some things working!

 

Once I got it sorted, using the legacy firewire drivers I managed to eventually source, the TI PCI card actually worked flawless for me in Windows 10 with my MOTU 828 MkII FW plugged into it. I've now upgraded to WIndows 11 and using an Audient ID14 MKII via USB C though, using my old MOTU now as an ADAT addon for my Audient to get additional inputs, so no longer need the firewire connection.

 

So is upgrading on Linux. I can't tell you how many Linux Mint upgrades I have done. it was as easy as 1,2,3. Not one issue yet.

 

I prefer DriverBooster. Works well for years

 

First off - if it works it don't need to be fixed. Second - automated updating drivers for no good reason is a fools paradise. If a device is NOT performing up to par, and a driver update would fix the issue, the DEVICE OEM is where you get drivers from. If the device OEM doesn't have an official update then there is no update. IF the device OEM says there is no update yet some third party, no name site says THEY have one, it would be highly suspect that driver has "issues".

 

Know your hardware, you own your hardware and it is your job to keep up to date.

I don't mass update, because this brings risk.

If there is an update, I check to see if the update fixes something that is annoying me or brings new features I like. Otherwise, if I keep using the same drivers if I am happy with my configuration.

Updates always bring new risk, the risk of unknown new problems and crashes.

This principle has worked for me for decades.

OS updates (Linux)
This is something I do often, early and regularly

OS updates (Windows)
I am usually a little more cautious with this, if it is a security update then I take it

 

Not an NVidia user then?

I mean if your kernel supports whatever you're running you're good but anything apart from that is a chore.

 

rarely if at all, I have never seen driver update make anything better

 

I update everything manually as I feel I need to, using the appropriate vendor's tools.

I also occasionally check CCleaner, as it mentions some of the drivers that have updates, but I'll just use it as a quick check, not to install.

 

I never use any sort of utility like Snappy driver. I don't need it to check what I need to do and I want to be in complete control of what I download, install and save. So I never use utilities for mass downloading drivers etc. I download each driver manual separately from the vendors site.

And I only update OS device drivers like video, storage, ethernet, chipset etc. when there's an issue or for some other reason it's necessary.

I ALWAYS update drivers of my audio/midi devices whenever they're available. Most of the time they offer more stability or functionality. I have seldom encountered issues with updated drivers in this category. Or it's corrected very shortly after release.

I always keep drivers of OS as well as audio/midi for at least 3 generations back so I can always revert back to a (better) working one if issues occur!

 

Hi. How do you like that MOTU configured as a standalone AD-DA converter? How does it works? Can it be used simultaneously for both inputs and outputs, or you need to dedicate it to just inputs, or just outputs?

 

Driver Booster has become really annoying over the years: it wants to install shit you don't want on your system during the install dialog. It also wants to sell you shit all the time and it likes to collect data. I wouldn't use it nowadays.

 

I never knew CCleaner does this! I've used it for years as a deep general one-click clean kind of tool for maintaining my system and my registry but never knew it checked app updates. I will have to explore this as its always one of the first apps I reinstall on every clean install!

 

I only have it set up for inputs and I like it. I have my Audient set up as slave and MOTU as master, after following Audient's guide on how to set up an additional ADAT device. That means my Audient's outputs are used for my monitor speakers, my monitoring headphones, and the easy access guitar/microphone input. All other sound generating equipment, such as hardware synths, are set up to input into the MOTU, and I actually use a patch bay to give myself more inputs and routing options too. This means I have way more options for inputs as I rarely use all of my hardware simultaneously, so can easily run the output from another device to override the input signal into the MOTU using my patch bay. I find it work well for me in a smaller studio space. Longer term, the aim is to have a dedicated hardware processing patch into inputs 1 and 2 of the MOTU that I can run my master channel through, and use inputs 2-8 as mentioned above for mono/stereo hardware instruments inputs configurable via the patch bay.