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Drivers living like programs

E

etherealfocus

Senior member
Anyone know why certain drivers insist on pretending they're programs and getting a listing in Add/Remove Programs?

If I want to remove a driver I'll just pop into Device Manager and trash it.

Also I'm a little OCD about my organization. 😛

RealTek Card Reader
Microsoft Mouse and Keyboard Center
LG United Mobile Device Driver (for my now-busted G2 phone)
Intel Graphics Driver

...And that's after I scrubbed my Program Files of crap and installed everything I could through Windows Update.

All four of those apps create a Program entry even when installed through WU... and that's just on my Probook. Wife's Inspiron 13 is worse.
 
Some of them are programs, as well as drivers. Microsoft mouse and keyboard for example. You can go into devices and change key functions, mouse button functions, etc. Intel Graphics also installs a program, just like Nvidia's Control panel and AMD's Catalyst control panel.

Not familiar with your phone or card reader.
 
I have a Realtek card reader in my notebook and in this path (C : Program Files (x86)\Realtek\Realtek PCIE Card Reader) lies the driver, probably used for deploying the drivers.
I have checked and didn't see any program for the card reader.


Edit. Intel HD Graphics comes with software.
 
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etherealfocus said:
Anyone know why certain drivers insist on pretending they're programs and getting a listing in Add/Remove Programs?

If I want to remove a driver I'll just pop into Device Manager and trash it.
Click to expand...

Because the former is easier to grasp for the average user than the latter.

I don't know why you would get everything from WU though, nothing makes my hardware as unstable as WU drivers. Hunting down the latest drivers from chip makers takes some effort, but for me it pays off with little time spent troubleshooting.
 
Yeah I do that when I have to. On this machine it hasn't been an issue though. Maybe WU is getting better, maybe I'm just getting lucky. 🙂

No biggie of course, I'm just being OCD about stupid drivers taking liberties with my Program Files. I don't want the stupid Intel software or the Realtek software or any of the rest of it. The job of a driver (especially for stuff like the IGP that Windows controls just fine out of the box) is to make hardware run and get out of the way. Obviously a little different if you have a dedicated GPU or other more demanding/controllable hardware of course.
 
WU is not getting better. For some devices, it constantly suggests driver updates older than the ones I have installed.
 
Guess I'm just lucky then. Wonder what's so hard about getting it right. Is it just OEMs not bothering to validate new/better drivers?
 
etherealfocus said:
No biggie of course, I'm just being OCD about stupid drivers taking liberties with my Program Files. I don't want the stupid Intel software or the Realtek software or any of the rest of it. The job of a driver (especially for stuff like the IGP that Windows controls just fine out of the box) is to make hardware run and get out of the way. Obviously a little different if you have a dedicated GPU or other more demanding/controllable hardware of course.
Click to expand...
If you only want to remove a driver from DeviceMgr, then you should only install it from within DeviceMgr too. E.g. for IGP, if you install drivers for the display adapter, Win will only pick up the display drivers and not the entire control software suite.
Personally, I prefer accompanying programs that allow me a finer control of the stuff in the drivers...
 
All my stuff is installed from WU. It installed the apps for me too. Microsoft is bad about that as well - I plug in one of their wireless mouse-keyboard combos and I get prompted to install their software about 10 seconds later. Not saying the software is bad, just that I don't want it and wish there was more separation. I tried removing the Intel IGP app just now and it refreshed my display and said Windows detected a new device... reinstalled, poof, there's the IGP control software again.

Facepalm. At least give us a choice...
 
Being OCD about particular Windows' filesystem issues is a losing battle. Just let them have their directory / paths. It doesn't hurt anything (that I know of).
 
etherealfocus said:
All my stuff is installed from WU. It installed the apps for me too. Microsoft is bad about that as well - I plug in one of their wireless mouse-keyboard combos and I get prompted to install their software about 10 seconds later. Not saying the software is bad, just that I don't want it and wish there was more separation. I tried removing the Intel IGP app just now and it refreshed my display and said Windows detected a new device... reinstalled, poof, there's the IGP control software again.

Facepalm. At least give us a choice...
Click to expand...
Well, you do have a choice - don't update/install drivers from WU.
Basically, you're giving full liberties to the driver provider to decide what it should install, and then complaining that it takes liberties to install what you don't want. That's how it sounds to me 🙂
 
iCyborg said:
Well, you do have a choice - don't update/install drivers from WU.
Basically, you're giving full liberties to the driver provider to decide what it should install, and then complaining that it takes liberties to install what you don't want. That's how it sounds to me 🙂
Click to expand...

WU should just be drivers imho. Want the extra junk? Either accept a prompt or get it from the vendor.
 
See, I don't consider control panel for graphics drivers as junk, I actually need it. Pushing McAfee or Ask Toolbar with every update, now that's junk (I'm looking at you Adobe and Oracle)...

When you manually install drivers, as well as lots of other software, typically you have "Express settings" and "Customize settings". If you don't want to spend effort to customize, that's fine, but complaining "Express" doesn't do exactly what you think should be the default, just isn't a legit complaint to me.

WU basically does "Express install" of drivers, I'd do the same on MS side. Do win auto updates ever come with prompts?
 
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