{"id":5291,"date":"2013-01-06T12:29:50","date_gmt":"2013-01-06T17:29:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/?p=5291"},"modified":"2013-01-06T12:29:50","modified_gmt":"2013-01-06T17:29:50","slug":"consider-driver-updater-software-carefully","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/consider-driver-updater-software-carefully\/","title":{"rendered":"Consider Driver Updater Software Carefully"},"content":{"rendered":"

Barb wants to know about Driver Detective
\n<\/strong>I was wondering if a program called Driver Detective is recommended by you. I try to follow your suggestions to keep my computer healthy and working well. Thank you in advance for your advice.<\/p>\n

Our answer<\/strong>
\nHi Barb. One of the problems of our business is recommending programs at some point in time and having times or the program change. Many programs we recommended during the long Windows XP era. And that era is just 15 months from ending. So if we’ve been remiss with anything it’s been with UN-recommending programs we once recommended. We will try to do that whenever it comes up – and since you brought up Driver Detective (indeed once recommended by us) we’ll un-recommend it and any driver updater program we may have recommended over the years.<\/p>\n

Why? Our experience over the years has taught us one thing: If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it. Installing updated drivers when the hardware associated with that driver or depending on that driver is working fine, updating the driver (in most cases) isn’t going to result in the hardware working better. And sometimes installing a new driver can lead to serious Windows problems. Blue Screen of Death (BSODs) can be caused by installing new drivers or incorrect drivers.<\/p>\n

The problem with driver updater programs like Driver Detective is that they are (like all software) dumb. They don’t check to see if your hardware is functioning well, they don’t know if you’re having problems with a certain hardware driver or device, they simple check your drivers and see if there are newer versions of those drivers available — and if there are, they download and install them. Most of the time there is no reason to install new drivers for anything — especially if everything is working as it should.<\/p>\n

If you are currently using a driver updater program (whether we once recommended it or not) we now recommend that you uninstall it and only install new drivers if you are experiencing problems with your computer’s hardware devices. Or as the old adage suggests — if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.<\/p>\n

While we’re on the subject of programs we once recommended and no longer do, we would both like to recommend right now that any of you with Advanced System Care (free or paid version) from Iobit — uninstall it. At the time we recommended it, we felt it was a good program with some worthy features. Unfortunately, like so many programs, it has become an overgrown nuisance that can actually cause more problems than it fixes. During our experiences with Cloudeight Direct Computer Care, we’ve sound many of you using Advanced System Care and found it was causing problems with the computers on which it was installed. We have removed it from the computers we’ve worked on and we suggest that you remove this program if you are still using it.<\/p>\n

We will try to publish “un-recommendations” of software we once recommended whenever we become aware of it. Since, over the years, we’ve recommended hundreds of software programs, and many of them we still recommend, we cannot guarantee we’ll “un-recommend” all the programs we probably should, but we will try!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barb wants to know about Driver Detective I was wondering if a program called Driver Detective is recommended by you. I try to follow your suggestions to keep my computer healthy and working well. Thank you in advance for your advice. Our answer Hi Barb. One of the problems of our business is recommending programs at some point\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5291"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5291\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}