Windows 10 hardware drivers installed from Windows Update good enough?

[airborne]

These days you can install Windows 10, run update once and all the motherboard drivers are downloaded from Windows update and its sorted. Is it that good practice or should I go to the effort of downloading and installing the manufacturer released drivers?

Have seen people mentioning before that many times the drivers that auto downloaded from Windows update will work the best with Windows, ie Windows has already vetted and cleared them as being 100% compatible with the OS, whilst they may not be the very latest they will in most instances be the most stable.

 

[agentrfr]

Windows have put a lot of effort into getting drivers to work through the auto update. You should be fine with just the updates through there, maybe manually download GPU drivers if you use a discreet GPU card; otherwise you should be fine

 

[Rickster]

Snappy Driver Installer.

 

[Hamish McPanji]

Not always. A windows 10 update to the fingerprint reader borked it, and I had to try and remember my damn passwords again.

Also had an issue with a network adapter

 

[bekdik]

create a restore point prior to installing drivers. Restore if it breaks something.

 

[airborne]

Snappy Driver Installer.

Thanks, that's an interesting one, free and open source. Anyone actually used it, how uptodate is their driver database?

https://sdi-tool.org/

 

[Rickster]

Thanks, that's an interesting one, free and open source. Anyone actually used it, how uptodate is their driver database?

https://sdi-tool.org/

I use it everytime, very up to date.

 

[sajunky]

I never use "driver update applications" from WEB. It is a receipe for receiving adware/viruses/rootkits.

 

[Rickster]

I never use "driver update applications" from WEB. It is a receipe for receiving adware/viruses/rootkits.

Not Snappy Driver Installer.

 

[HavocXphere]

Well I'm sure there are lots of opinions on this front, but me:

1) Windows drivers for everything except:
2) GFX drivers from Nvidia/AMD...those do move fairly fast so makes sense to get the latest if you're a gamer
3) If something is funky (e.g. sound glitches) then I check out latest to replace windows one. Realtek in particular often have much newer drivers on their (oddly password protected) FTP server

Deeply distrust any/all "driver" tools floating around...not going to touch those ever.

 

[airborne]

Not Snappy Driver Installer.

Where do they pull the drivers from?

Is it like an online repo that is updated every time a user installs a new driver and it's the Dll etc files only, not full installers so the file size is small?

 

[Rickster]

Where do they pull the drivers from?

Is it like an online repo that is updated every time a user installs a new driver and it's the Dll etc files only, not full installers so the file size is small?

Not sure what you asking but you can download the main client (12GB) if you are a techie and should it become out of date it will patch itself.

 

[airborne]

Not sure what you asking but you can download the main client (12GB) if you are a techie and should it become out of date it will patch itself.

Or it will search the I online repo and just download what's needed for a particular install?

 

[Rickster]

Or it will search the I online repo and just download what's needed for a particular install?

If you download the .exe it will scan your pc and download the drivers.

 

[xcaliber]

I use windows, amd and MSI

 

[airborne]

If you download the .exe it will scan your pc and download the drivers.

I tried out snappy driver app, seems good, actually perfect for clueless people because manually hunting down the correct driver on the internet can be like finding a needle in a haystack.