Beware the Device Driver Scam - Comments Page 1

This man, Bob Rankin, has yet to steer me wrong! For years I have read and relied on his articles and his unbiased knowledge. I encourage all to do the same.

Thanks, Bob--great info! I have experimented with a couple of those "device updaters" and have not been impressed. More trouble than they're worth, in my view.

Maybe recommending a popup blocker or ad blocker or both would be a good choice.

I serve as PC support for my family and friends, and if I had a nickel for every time I had to fix a PC because somebody "clicked on" one of these scams, I'd be rich enough to retire. Blindly trust nothing on the interwebz.

Thanks Bob for another great subject. I have been plagued with this for a while and just ignore them. Thanks again. Mike

The only driver I update is the NVIDIA video drivers. Iff (if and only if) you play games having the latest video driver is very important. Every once in a while I check the mother board (manufacturer website only) to see if there are updates there, and get them. The new BIOS ... only if it fixes a problem YOU have. That one can easily brick your motherboard and should only be done IF you know what you are doing AND the computer is on a UPS. Audio drivers will probably never need updates, they have been pretty much the same forever.

Although the comments seem to be uniformly negative, I find the free versions of reputable driver tools useful. I would never use any automatic method to keep drivers updated(!), but the better free tools tell me what is available and even where to find them for possible manual downloading. These reports are very useful to glance at every few weeks or so - perhaps worth overlooking the entreaties to upgrade to the premium versions.

I fell for the update scam and ended up with a Blue Screen Of Death which required going back a previous OS version to recover use of my PC. I've avoided that offer to update ever since!

I use AdBlock Plus in Firefox, which has the Pop-up blocker, so I don't encounter these. BUT I recently became so annoyed with AVG that I disabled it, and now need to put in a replacement. AVG was daily or more often sending messages advising that this or that should be done, all leading to their pitch for an upgrade to the paid product. And OBTW there's been yet another change to their software and the computer has to be Restarted with that install. A bit off topic perhaps, but also relates back to your recent post AVG and the other anti-virus software.

Learned, years ago -- NOT to click on anything, that pops up on the Internet!!!

I learned to use reliable means, to "update" any of my driver devices. I usually, registered my devices and I would get "update" notices, from the manufacturer. How often, did I get these notifications? Rarely.

I do get notifications from Logitech, for my keyboard and mouse for "upgrades" for their Set Point program. When, I had a NVIDIA graphic card, I would get regular "upgrade" notifications and would utilize the upgrades. Now, that is just about it. I don't recall getting any notifications for my printer, but, on extremely rare occasions.

In all honesty, there are only a few drivers for devices, on any PC or Mac ... The Graphic Card, the Printer and the Keyboard/Mouse drivers. If, you purchased a Brand Name Computer, they will notify you, of any issues with their Motherboard, Cards and Keyboard/Mouse drivers. Rarely, does anyone need to update the BIOS! In fact, even as I am vastly experienced with computers, only once did I have to update a BIOS and that came from a notification from the Motherboard manufacturer.

Yes, DO use Pop-Up Blockers and Ad-Blockers when surfing the Web. O:-)

I usually avoid driver updates but after 3 years my Windows 7 desktop started acting up and there didn't seem to be any reason why. I was thinking a system restore from an image backup but came across an article about a program called Slimdrivers. Tried it and updated my drivers and so far so good. It's a free program that seems to get drivers directly from the source. It does try to install a cleaner program if you don't uncheck it. After all my drivers where updated I also disabled the auto startup option. Just my two cents worth.

I have been lucky with this, but being a now retired IT guy I have cleaned up more than one computer that was a total mess.

If anyone does, however, want to use an automatic driver check, I recommend IO Bit's www.iobit.com Driver Booster.

I was able to obtain some older drivers for a motherboard I was setting up. The manufacturer no longer had the drivers listed, but this program (both free and pay) was able to find them and installed them.

I did not configure the program to run automatically at startup. Why? It's not like drivers are updated daily.

I also went for the free version, the only difference I could see is it downloads slower. Who cares...

Anyway, I hope this is helpful and Bob I enjoy your newsletters and have passed on the link to my friends. :)

Thanks Bob, for what turned out to be usable info
for me.

Would have liked to have seen "the other side of the coin"... it is the printer/scanner/peripherals manufacturers whose interest is Selling New Equipment, NOT updating drivers. I bought a great b&w laser printer in 1995... worked great... until I upgraded to XP... and no driver from the manufacturer... but I could buy another of their laser printers that would work with XP! (Was it cosmetic tweaks with an upgraded driver?) I parked the printer until one day, years later, some Italian blessed programmer re-wrote the Driver for my printer, and viola! my "old" parked printer was back in service! That was fine until we got to the numbered Windoze and in Win7, no bananas! This old lady has a Serial Port so I got a Serial-to-USB cable and ... unless I tried to struggle with "In XP Mode", no printer. Again parked but one day some clever programmer re-wrote the driver for the printer to work on Win 7, 8 and 8.1!! Imagine my delight! So now I can still use this 20 year old printer with all of its advantages! Easy to refill the cartridge with most any toner, brush off the drum every year or so, make sure that the Serial/USB cable is working right and those

When I upgraded to Win 10 I had to get drivers for my printer and scanner, both HP. A quick visit to their website and some looking and I was good to go.
I tried one of those driver updaters back when I ran XP and it told me ALL of my drivers needed updating. Yeah, right!

I have a Toshiba Satellite Pro C650 and I upgraded from Win 7 Home Premium to Won 10. The web cam stopped working and the OS told me there was no driver installed. I could find nothing on Toshiba's sites for this part of the world (New Zealand) so I phoned their help desk. Toshiba says my model can not be upgraded to Win 10 and I need to roll back to 7. I told Toshiba that I had bought about 10 of their laptops over the last few years and that I will never buy another Toshiba product. We have a couple of tablets with web cams so it is no big deal but I am really annoyed that Toshiba is too lazy to support their customers.

Bob, I'd think a fitting end to your article would have been listing some of the driver update programs you have found to be safe and worthwile.

I used the Iobit Drive Booster and my computer has had crashes daily.I uninstalled Iobit and reinstalled windows but i still have the problem.

Olamoree, I'm with you. My old workhorse MS mouse that came with my Win 3.1 computer still worked great even after all the newer ones gave up the ghost; I had get a cable adapter to go from PS to USB, but no prob. And then...yep...no supported driver on the next version of Windows. It still sits on my desk as reminder of when electronics were not considered to be "Kleenex."

BTW...I've had "driver updates" suggested by several utility programs and inevitably they wonked up my system and required a restore. Often, the newer drivers aren't really for your (old) component or device, but the utilities somehow can't figure that out.

Best bets? Go to your computer manufacturer's site first for in-computer components, if everything is OEM. Secondly, go to the component or device manufacturer's site. And only if something doesn't seem to be working correctly.

What about the IObit software = driver update. Is that good? I use it all the time. what do you think?