Managing Drivers in Windows

In the vast ecosystem of Windows, managing device drivers can be a complex task, especially when dealing with third-party drivers. Tools like Driver Store Explorer (also known as RAPR), hosted on GitHub, offer a streamlined approach to handling drivers in the Windows driver store.

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[avidwriter]

For most people (personal PC) I think "if it isn't broken, don't fix it" I don't know how many times in the past I wanted to "update" or "upgrade" by drivers and it broke something and caused a headache and my time to undo and "re-fix" it. If your PC is fine, just leave it.

[dagamusik]

Driver Store Explorer was the best discovery, Thanks!

[Tanguylecoutre]

I really like snappy driver origin (as a newbie). I remember last year I built my own PC and I didn't even know what pcie drivers were and a whole bunch of other drivers such as realtek for audio. I ran the program and had like 8-16 drivers (can't remember the exact number) not installed or completely outdated. After downloading and installing them I realised how important certain ones are such as pcie drivers for system security. All in all one of the best programs I ever downloaded.

[peterschmidt]

I ended up using Snappy Driver installer because I couldn't get the official drivers to install on a new mini PC running Win10 instead of 11. Awesome tool. Under WIn10 there were so many drivers that wouldn't install (thunderbolt, CPU, USBs, graphics). This tool (while it took a bit of time to download the drivers) got it up and running and working how it should have in the first place.

Although the first tool you mentioned also seems like a good addition. Great that you can export your current drivers if you need to reinstall Windows.

BTW Installing Linux on the same hardware was a breeze compared to Windows.

[chaosmaou]

Great topic Chris!

I recently did a clean install of Win 11 Pro on my new AM5 system. By default both iGPU and dedicated GPU were enabled in the bios, and Windows Update was installing a different driver version for each, which would break display drivers entirely. I figured out driver store explorer myself just last week, then saw this video!

There is also a logitech lighting driver that gets pulled in through Windows update that enables the new dynamic lighting for keyboard and mice, but that update makes ALL of my USB ports not work when booting into safe mode! Both these issues were fixed by DSE.

[Meche]

I love SDI ❤🎉. SDI can be a 30GB offline download. Use it for all new installs.

[More_Row]

I've had some terrible experiences up through the years using these programs. The worst one had to be IOBIT driver something, man that fucked up my computer real good.

[SFDestiny]

I love new CTT content! (Also, I haven't needed something like this since 22H2, probably earlier.)

[gmt-yt]

If folks knew that in device manager, they can go to a mystery device, right click, go to the Details tab, and in the drop-down the second item, "Device instance path" will contain the hexidecimal PID/VID, VEN/DEV, or maybe other identifiers which can be typed into Google to identify any hardware (non-virtual) device with missing drivers, a lot less people would get sucked into those sketchy driver pack PUPs. I dread the eventual and inevitable removal of this functionality when they force it all to be done in the Metro UI :)

[xtremeandroidsupport]

you will hit 1M subs this year like your new path ❤

[temyraverdana]

Wow, this video is more useful. Thanks a lot for all this new tips

[ahmed-osama]

Driver Store Explorer is the best thing I learned from the video, thanks a lot 😊

[johndesousa]

I have used Snappy Driver before and I can say if you can't find a driver this does work well. On occasion you do get a faulty driver that messes up the system but great for old PC's using Windows 8.1 or older where it might be difficult to find a driver because most websites and Microsoft have stopped supporting the hardware and Operating system.

[vasudevmenon]

You can use dism++ as well. It doubles up as image management via dism and target all windows version provided you're on latest windows 11 ADK

[jumbojet]

Recently, did a fresh win 11 install on a new laptop: windows handled all the driver installation, no additional steps needed. Including Nvidia driver. So, it seems like current state of events in the windows world is so comfortable, that you don't even have a need to think to bother.

[guidrysolomonadvising]

I love it when a topic I haven't considered in a while is unexpectedly covered by a creator I trust.

Speaking of, what is your current process for reloading Windows 10/11? Especially fresh install and serial key management?

[becs-psbb]

you are water in the desert. thank you, really for all your work.

[ChristopherJamesNeff]

7:03

Why does that matter though?

They can’t actually legally do anything to you because calling out and exposing bad products is a constitutional right you have under your First Amendment rights of Freedom Of Speech so long as you are being honest and not lying or slandering anyone in any way.

Doing anything to silence valid criticism is unconstitutional and would immediately be thrown out in any court system by any judge.

Don’t be fooled. Those are empty threats. They have no legal claim or power over you.

[tomspencer]

I watch your videos about Windows because they are interesting. Sometimes I am tempted to install that OS just to see if your efforts will work, but I could dine rather well at a fancy restaurant for the price..

[kebugcheck]

cannot believe you didn't talk about autoruns: the goto tool used to safely disable useless drivers. yes there are useless drivers and disabling them is very useful because drivers can consume NPP memory (unlike application which usually consume only paged pool)