Never Download a Driver-Updating Utility; They’re Worse Than Useless

Never Download a Driver-Updating Utility; They’re Worse Than Useless

Never download a driver-updating utility. Like PC-cleaning programs, they try to charge you money for a service you don’t need. They do this by scaring you with threats of blue screens and system problems.

Even if a driver-updating tool worked perfectly and the company behind it didn’t seem unbelievably sleazy, they wouldn’t be worth your time — much less your money. Stay away.

DriverUpdate.net Examined
We’ve seen advertisements for a “Driver Update Utility” from driverupdate.net all over the place recently. This is usually a bad sign — we also see ads for PC cleaners, registry cleaners, game boosters, and all sorts of other utilities that don’t actually do anything besides try to make money from you and install garbage onto your PC.

We installed this software so you don’t have to — really, don’t try this at home. We started with DriverUpdate. it will scan your computer for drivers for free, and then you can pay $30 to receive free automatic driver updates for a year. That’s what it promises, anyway.

The program starts out claiming to be by a “Microsoft Gold Certified Partner.” This doesn’t actually mean Microsoft has placed their stamp of approval on this utility. It then attempts to install other junk software you won’t want.

After installation, DriverUpdate ran a scan and informed us that our computer had 14 out-of-date drivers, many of which are considered “ancient.” This is on a fresh Windows 8.1 system — installed just a few months ago — with the latest drivers available from the manufacturer’s website at the time. There’s no possible we have “ancient” drivers from 2006 installed.

If you try to update your drivers, you’re told that the installed drivers “can cause problems, system slowdowns and bluescreen errors.” This is technically true, but very unlikely. It’s also technically true that updated drivers could cause problems, system slowdowns, and blue-screen errors by introducing new bugs. It’s a wash.

The tool wants you to pay $30 a year to “Fix current device driver problems,” “Benefit from new driver features,” and “Prevent future system problems.” It’s very unlikely any driver will offer new features, and it’s very unlikely your current drivers could cause “future system problems.”

This is all designed to convince you to pay that $30 — and that “Microsoft Gold Certified Partner” logo there is designed to make the program seem more legitimate than it actually is.

Tech Support Scams and Crashes
Some reviews on Download.com allege that if you actually pay $30, you’ll receive a phone call from customer service informing you that they found problems on your computer during the driver update scan. For just a few hundred more dollars, you can have them fixed! It’s basically just the Windows tech support phone call scam, but they’re only going after people who have already proven they’ll spend money for questionable software. Other users report the company charged them more than $30 after they attempted to buy a subscription, tacking on “add-ons” that raised the price.

Other people report crashes and blue-screens after installing updated drivers from this application — not a huge surprise. The reviewer below recommends “trying another one,” but you don’t need any driver-updating utility. Stay away from them all.

Driver Support and Other Tools
We’ve seen other driver updaters behave poorly, too. We saw one driver utility detect a virtual machine as a Dell PC. We’ve seen driver-updating tools pop up with suggestions to install drivers for printers that were never connected to the PC.

Here’s another driver-updating utility in action. It’s named “Driver Support” and uses the same business model, charging $30 a year for driver updates. It’s even more ridiculous — it says our computer’s “Driver Health Is Low!”. To fix this, we need to update our “HID-compliant mouse” driver. This is a standard type of hardware — you should never need to update this basic mouse driver; it’s included in Windows.

You Don’t Need to Update Your Drivers, Anyway
Here’s the thing — you don’t actually need to regularly update your drivers. If you play PC games, you do need to update your NVIDIA or AMD graphics drivers regularly — but that’s it. And both NVIDIA and AMD include automatic driver-updating tools along with the graphics drivers to make this easy.

Driver updates occasionally arrive via Windows Update, so a serious problem will be fixed just by installing your normal updates. Windows also automatically downloads the necessary drivers when you connect new hardware. Hardware driver-updating utilities would be a waste of time even if they worked properly.

http://www.howtogeek.com/198758/never-download-a-driver-updating-utility-theyre-worse-than-useless/

 

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!

oh man i needed this someone actually installed these and tried them rolmao x 100 i knew this where scams 5 years ago when they first came on the scene they started out of russia in 2010 then picked up in a lot of other countries from the u.k through the u.s and even canada there all fakes and worse they install exploits to steal your identies and personal information if you used these i feel so sorry for you and the damage that has happened to your computers

 

yeah never trust a thing that is scanning your drives but only picks up C drive, god i have C,E Y X and my back up drive S, when it finishes scanning your C drive in about 3 mins and tells you you have 8billion threats the clue is also there! but noobs like grannie /granpops fall for this shit! like i say, if you aint got that programme ignore and definitely do not ring the number its asks you to ring

 

i have actually used microsoft driver utility and it seemed to work and was free then i manually updated the drivers,
i have never tried 3rd party ones and don't think i would waste my time.As for microsoft gold certified i could add an image to this post saying it was approved by microsoft doesn't means its true.
some cleaners do actually clean your registry @2oldGeek would be the person to ask if you did wanna clean it and use a proper free program, ccleaner seems to work fine for me.
Just on the topic i have also seen hundreds of programs offering free virus scans on pcs .Most are scams but i found panda free online scan did pick up issues a few years ago when i ran it, it wouldn't remove the malware for free (obviously) but gave me the files paths so i could manually remove it.
scanning a 500gbs hard drive (about 300gbs was used) took about 2 hours and that would be normal time for a scan to pick up all threats,no actual real full scans would do it in a few minutes.

 

But did Panda drop those issues on your system? which is the key to most of these scams. I've played plenty with Panda and I can't really say anything good about it however in your case they may not have dropped nasties on your system, they have a decent reputation to security.

Driver update tools are only about exploiting your system and you should never consider using them just like you should never give your passwords out to someone who says your system is at risk and they are here to help.

A good rule of thumb, and the Apple iPhone people won't get this is, "IF IT ISN'T BROKE DON'T FIX IT". It truly doesn't get much more simple than that.

 

my computer had issues at the time,the posts are in virus section on here around 2010 i think and yes i 100% had issues before running the scan.

 

Reg Cleaners don't work.. They will NOT speed up your computer more than a few Nanoseconds and it's not worth the risk of crashing your computer. Ccleaner is the only one I have trust in but don't use because Windows will take care of it. If you add, delete and install some programs then run Ccleaner it will have some entries show up to be cleaned. Just wait a day or so and they no longer show up, windows has done it's thing......

Driver programs are useless crap.... They will replace perfectly good drivers with Beta Versions or the same driver from a different vender..... Let Windows do it automatically:

To have Windows automatically download recommended drivers and icons
You can check Windows Update at any time to see if it found new drivers and icons for your hardware, especially if you recently installed a new device. If you want to have Windows Update automatically check for the latest drivers and icons, here's how:

1. Open Devices and Printers by clicking the Start button , and then, on the Start menu, clicking Devices and Printers.
   
   
2. Right-click the name of your computer, and then click Device installation settings.
   
   
3. Click Yes, do this automatically (recommended), and then click Save changes. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
   
   If Yes is already selected, click Cancel to close the dialog box.

If you let Windows automatically download drivers and information about your devices, your hardware is more likely to work properly.

2oG

 

"If you let Windows automatically download drivers and information about your devices, your hardware is more likely to work properly." I disagree. I have found that the updated drivers that Windows uses, are out of date.

 

That's possible......... but, I be dammed if I chase them down manually and I'm surely not using one of those crappy, Useless Up-daters...

 

That is absolutely true but even worst I've had Windows install the WRONG driver and caused me a lot more work trying to get the old driver FULLY removed in order to get my computer working again properly.

How tough is it to go to the MFG's site and download a driver? PROPER driver. Please......

 

I see your point but I have used the auto update drivers for years and have never had a bad experience. So, until I get "Snake-bit", I will probably continue to do it that way.

 

so I guess you don't own a Dell

 

i had a windows update hang for like 4 hours on shutdown (maybe longer went to bed woke up and was still same screen), on startup i managed to cancel it.

 

Never share a foxhole with anyone braver than yourself. What's a dell???

 

Dell is a computer builder.

I've had plenty of issues with Windows driver updates mostly with video and audio too but also with network cards. And I've had windows hang after updates several times as well. I've built thousands and thousands of computers so I may have possibly seen more problems than the average bear.

 

Come on now...... I was being facetious.

I, also, am not the average bear..

 

Hey, bearly counts.... even Halitosis is better than no breath at all!

 

I won't use anyone's automatic updater of drivers or apps, nor will I allow anything on any of my systems other than resident security software to auto-update itself. However, I will and do use an update checker for the information and notification it provides -- FileHippo in my case, but an older version than the newest releases that doesn't insist on being obnoxious as a full-service auto-updater. I find it very helpful to identify at each boot whether there are any new releases of something FH scans (which isn't a complete in-depth analysis) that's installed on my systems, then manually download the full installer version to a flash drive for installation to the various machines (old school -- download once, install as many times as needed). If FH is pushing out its own stub installer that includes add-on crapware in the background download without providing a direct download link, I'll go to the vendor's website for a full, clean installer. Regrettably, I understand that in another few months Adobe is going to phase out its developer-oriented webpage where full versions of new Flash releases can be directly downloaded, essentially forcing users to accept its default autoupdate option or use their stub installer with who-knows-what other crapware (but then I've long been convinced Adobe has a corporate mind made of brick). I also monitor the list of new downloads which AfterDawn provides, and wish that was still a feature of the site's occasional e-mail notices instead of now just containing news and active forum topics.