Windows 7 Drivers Information, Tips and Techniques

Hey- Rick here,

And you’re reading my uncensored review of what I really thought about Driver Robot.  Note that this is an independent review, though, so if you’re looking for Driver Robot’s official website then click here.

Why am I writing this?  Well, when I was dealing with driver updates for Windows 7, I did some research and ran across this product that automated the whole process for me, so I thought I’d share what I found, since I didn’t find many real reviews around.

But be warned, I’ll be going into both the good and bad points in this review, so if that’s something you might not want to hear, then you may as well leave now (I’m a big believer in unbiased reviews).  So here goes…

First, the facts about the product.  Driver Robot is a software tool that automates:

• Identifying which drivers are on your Windows 7 system
• Determining which of your drivers are up-to-date and which ones need updating, with a single button click
• Locating the latest and best drivers for your particular hardware, using its driver database of over 100,000 drivers
• Downloading all the drivers that need to be updated, with a single button click
• Assisting somewhat with the actual driver installation
• Periodically scanning your system and letting you know about critical driver updates (similar to how Windows and anti-virus systems notify you when a newer version of software updates is available)

I found the product very simple to download and install initially.  Click here to download it and give it a try (it’s free to scan your system and see the state of your Windows 7 drivers).

When you first run Driver Robot, you get a single, simple page that looks like this:

As you can see, it’s dead-stick simple.  You simply press the “START SCAN” button and it scans your PC drivers.

When the scan is finished (about 15 to 20 seconds on my particular system), it then shows you what it has found:

As you can see here, it found 7 new drivers for my Windows 7 system.  It creates a list of all drivers on your system, along with the status of each one; out of date, update-to-date or built-in system drivers (that belong to Windows itself).

You then simply press the “GET DRIVERS” button, and the next screen appears:

At this point, each set of related drivers that need updating are shown.  You simply click on the “Start” button (where the little red arrow is pointing above) and this begins the Windows 7 driver download process.

I have to say at this point, this is as easy as locating and downloading the right drivers can possibly be.  Click here to see how easy it is for yourself.

The entire process to this point has taken about one minute!  For this, Driver Robot scores very high points as the simplest, fastest way to identify the drivers that are out of date, find the correct driver and enable the user to download it at the touch of a button.

After the driver is downloaded (time depends on size of driver file, usually a couple of minutes or less), it is ready to install, as shown here:

At this point, Driver Robot has downloaded the driver(s) and they’re ready to install.  To begin the driver install process, you click on the “Install” button (another red arrow above).

So far, so good.  Driver Robot has automated about as much of the process as it can.  Installing the drivers from this point forward is fairly straightforward.  When you click on the Install button, the downloaded driver files are opened up in a compressed file (e.g., WinZip) program.  You can then “extract” the files into a folder on your PC, where you then install the drivers (using the procedures I outlined in an earlier post).

I really wish the driver installation process could be more automated than this, but drivers are so diverse and different, there’s no easy way to streamline the process completely.  This is the biggest area that’s still lacking in the product, though.  I would’ve liked to have seen the extraction process automated, along with identifying exactly which driver install setup file to run (maybe in a future version – we’ll see).

Nevertheless, Driver Robot takes what used to be an error-prone Web search, sift through the results, look through each website to find the proper driver, manually compare the versions and make sure the latest version is chosen and then manually download the driver install files.  So Driver Robot automates the most error-prone part of the process, making driver selection and downloading so easy (dare I say) – even a caveman could do it!

Anyway, that’s the good news.  The bad news is, full use of Driver Robot isn’t completely free, but it is very affordable.  I can understand why they charge a little for it.  It’s a nice little tool that saves a ton of time and greatly simplifies the complexities of driver management.  And the 100,000+ latest drivers in the database is a real time saver.

Bottom Line:

Driver Robot takes you by the hand, and shows you step by step the easiest way to find the best drivers for your Windows 7 (or earlier) system and makes downloading, installing and updating drivers as easy as it gets.

Click here to visit the Driver Robot site

Installing Windows 7 Drivers is fairly straightforward, once you understand how to manage your Windows devices.  In this post, we’ll see how to access the Windows 7 Device Manager, access a particular device and update or install device drivers.

When updating or installing Windows 7 drivers manually, I like to see what device drivers are already installed on my system before installing or changing anything.  As an aside, it’s also a good idea to ensure you have a recent “Restore Point” before messing around with system settings – like device drivers or registry settings, as there’s always some risk that Windows might encounter troubles rebooting after such low-level changes.

Now, let’s begin by having a look at the devices we have installed first.  You can access Device Manager a few different ways.  One way is to open Control Panel and enter “device” in the search box, then choose Device Manager.

Another way is to right-click on the My Computer icon (on the desktop or in the Start menu), and choose the “Properties” menu as shown below:

Once you select the Properties menu, you’ll see the following screen:

The above dialog shows your computer’s properties.  In the upper left corner you’ll see the “Device Manager” link.  Click on that link to bring up the Device Manager, which will look like this:

As you can see, the Device Manager lists all your computer’s devices in a tree list.  You can open and expand each of those list items by clicking on it.  For example, you can see here I have opened up the Network Adapters to see two Intel network devices – one is the Ethernet hard-wired port and the other is the wireless adapter.

Next, right click on the desired device, and select “Properties”.  You’ll then see a device properties dialog like this one pop up for the device you selected:

Now, on this device properties dialog you can see quite a lot of information.  As shown above, you can select the “Driver” tab, which then shows the currently installed driver information, the driver’s date, version, etc.

From here, you can (among other things) select the Update Driver button to update the driver.  There are a couple of options, which appear in this dialog:

The above dialog provides a couple of options:

1) You can let Windows search automatically for an updated driver.  This will work in some cases, but not in others.

2) You can “Browse” your computer’s hard drive to locate a driver that you downloaded. In many cases, you will have downloaded the latest driver from a vendor’s site or using some type of driver location service, and the driver files will be located in a folder on your PC.  In this case, you simply browse to that folder where you stored the downloaded files and choose the appropriate sub-folder for your PC (pay particular attention to whether you need 32-bit or 64-bit driver versions, as there will likely be several to choose from).

If you don’t see a Windows 7 sub-folder in the driver directory, you may have to settle for using a Vista driver instead (most Vista drivers are compatible with Windows 7).

Here’s a decent video that demonstrates this process:

Now that we have seen how to install or update a driver using Device Manager, there may be another option.  Many device drivers have their own installation programs.  For these types of drivers (e.g., HP printer drivers), you’ll want to use the vendor’s installation program, which is usually an executable program in the root directory or main folder where you downloaded the driver.  Running the vendor’s install will often install additional vendor utilities and tools, in addition to the driver.  Sometimes this is desirable – sometimes not (depending on the device).

If you purchased a new hardware device for your PC, it’s best to begin with the software/driver installation instructions that came with your hardware device – at least as a starting point.

Hope that quick overview of locating and installing/updating devices using Device Manager is helpful.