Free Driver Scans ?

[clarkey01]

Most programs I know will scan for free then ask you to pay for them retrieving those drivers for you....Are there any totally free ones?


Cheers guys

 

[tcsenter]

The only 'free' ones are provided by an OEM manufacturer or vendor specifically for their products (e.g. HP or Intel).

The pay ones are riddled with flaws. e.g. report there is a 'newer' driver for your device, but the driver is actually for a different OS than you are using. Or, they are often just plain wrong. I once installed the latest Realtek LAN driver which had been released three days prior (direct from Realtek), and one of those driver agent scans told me it had a newer version, which turned out to be almost TWO YEARS OLD. WTF?? And the kicker is, there were at least four or five driver updates released between the two. So they couldn't explain the discrepancy merely because the latest driver had only been released for a few days and thus they weren't aware of it yet.

Its takes more work but you can identify and locate drivers yourself if you are familiar with hardware PNP PCI ID schemes.

 

[dguy6789]

Windows Update is probably the best free scan for newer drivers, but is still isn't perfect.

 

[AFurryReptile]

Device Doctor was just reviewed on Lifehacker as being pretty good at finding drivers for XP and Vista. I haven't tried it yet, let us know if it works for you.

http://www.devicedoctor.com/