Managing Drivers in Windows

drivers and windows is one of the most confusing topics probably out there and before we go any further the one takeaway I want you to have from this video is you should never spend money to buy any program that manages your drivers and windows there's no really great program out there that just installs all of them for you I want to go through all the different options and what you should be doing and then let's just tackle how this whole topic came to be honestly with Windows 10 and windows 11 it's less of a big deal but there's still that more obscure driver you need to go track down what's the best way to do that is there a tool that just makes it easy for you let's tackle that right now so the first thing I want to teach people is exporting drivers now you could do the easy way which is driver store Explorer open source free software on GitHub or you could just use built-in Powershell commands and just export all your current drivers out so let's say you're going to reload your system do this export all your drivers uh probably the easiest way to do it is through driver uh store Explorer I'll put a link down to the website that links it all and you can just download it it's a zip file you don't install the program it just runs directly off of the download folder so it'll it'll come in a zip file you just extract it here there is no setup or install file so you can just launch the program and then you you're presented with this type of screen now with with this screen you can select old drivers and delete those old drivers so it clears up some of your driver store which is really nice I like this program for that but also let's say you want to just take all these and Export them all so let's just export all drivers we'll make a folder called drivers and select it it's just going to take all the driver packages in this system and Export them into that folder I'm going to probably make this tool and bake into the toolbox directly for microwind so like let's say you're reloading a system you could use that in the future to do it it's on my my to-do list I just hadn't quite gotten around to it but it's very easy you could do it through driver store Explorer or directly from Powershell and not even use any third party tools which is always my recommended way so let's pull up our downloads again and in driver folder you can see all of our drivers just nicely exported out ready for a Reload but I wanted to show that open open source tool first just because it does a lot of really cool stuff and just kind of gives you a good heads up the fact it's free and open source pretty cool but also that whole export and also deleting the old drivers is clutch in a lot of systems so that's that one now let's get into the actual driver management tools the thing I warned you about when you clicked on the video the one I recommend the most Snappy driver installer I left the link on the website here and this is is what it looks like it's very good it's open source and it's probably the best tool out there right now for managing drivers I still don't recommend it for your first go-to honestly if you already have all your drivers in your systems just use those uh launching a tool to update your drivers to the best one still not recommended honestly if I was going to do that for my current system I'd go directly to my manufacturers website and download the drivers directly from there those drivers will always be vetted and the best drivers for your system this is doubly true in the laptop realm where a lot of times a tool like Snappy driver might install some questionable drivers or or maybe older or maybe drivers that aren't 100% compatible with your system so always rely on your manufacturers website first then the fallback Snappy driver and then I put two other tools on here mainly as a holy crap I can't get my network driver installed to download and use Snappy driver and that is 3dp Chip uh network uh downloader do not visit this site without an ad blocker because there is a just a gang of terrible ads and bad stuff in here but 3dp net sorry for the flashbang is fantastic for what it is it will get your network up and going but then get rid of it as soon as you're done with it uh this is one combo driver it's about a gig in size and it'll just download all the network drivers in existence and get your network controller up and then you can use like something like Snappy or go download the actual drivers from your manufacturer that's the the way to do it now there's also another one I'll I'll mention I'm hesitant to mention this one as I haven't used it a whole bunch but I know some people do and that's driver pack solution now I would never use the one that they recommend right here I would always use the offline Network again this is a bundled Network driver like 3dp chip these both 3dp chip and Driver pack are like Last Resorts like holy crap I can't get online I I just need a network connection and I know that these bundled tools will get that Network driver installed the only reason why I don't recommend them is they've had bad Shady passs like 3dp chip had some bundled malware with like an ad or something like that when it originally did it through the main thing now driver pack itself is not as bad as 3dp chip or or the main 3dp chip software but at the same time there is questions over the project uh I know its host is in Russia if that matters to you I don't really care but at the same time I don't like either one of these Solutions but I thought I'd mention them just in case you get in a pinch I have used them when my back was up against the wall and I had no other way of getting a network driver installed but at the end of the day remember what I said export your drivers use the manufacturer website when you can Snappy driver as your fallback and these are Last Resorts and that's really getting drivers going in your system in the future I want to make this a lot easier especially with my toolbox and get microwind up to Snuff with actually exporting uh all the drivers using the export Windows driver command as you see here you can just export all of them on the current running operating system and then hey if you're you're managing the same amount of systems in your Fleet if you do this on all the different variants in your Suite you'd have all your drivers and you never have to you know download any drivers ever again which would be fantastic or as long as you keep them up to date which it can be a chore in its own but at the the same time I wanted to make this video just kind of showing you the state of drivers I would show you the products out there that are really really bad but if there's a price tag associated with it it's a terrible product don't use it especially with drivers again I'd show it but I've already gotten two demand letters from law firms from things of calling out products that are bad on the market and I don't want another one of those so please just do these methods this is how everyone in the whole Market does it that is a professional with that let me know what I missed what other projects do you use how do you manage your drivers I imagine if you're an IT professional it's very much like this but maybe there's a project that you know let me know down in the comments and I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Chris Titus Tech

Views: 49,150

Keywords: chris titus tech

Id: R5RAgqB6YxM

Length: 7min 37sec (457 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 11 2024