I’ve been a fan of and subscriber to the Driver Updates Web site at www.DriverAgent.com for over two years, and have found it to be a reasonably safe and workable way to keep PC drivers up to date. Because I run anywhere from four to seven machines at any given moment—the actual count depends on how many projects I’ve got going and what requirements my test machines must satisfy—this involves at least four hours a month of my time just in keeping up with changes, updates, and so forth. Whenever I build a new machine (to the tune of a dozen or more each year) or test a ready-made PC (to the tune of a couple of dozen notebooks and as many as a dozen desktops) ensuring drivers are current and correct is important for testing and benchmarking.

What I’ve also learned over the past couple of years is that downloading and running mammoth driver collections—such as the Intel or AMD chipset drivers, or various motherboard component drivers that include HD Audio, Networking (wireless and wired), USB root and regular hubs, and so forth—doesn’t always bring my PCs completely up to currency when I’m trying to catch their drivers up. Particularly with Windows Vista, whose superior file indexing technology pays handsome dividends when using Device Manager to update drivers, I’ve discovered a couple of supplementary techniques for improving my “hit rate” in making sure my drivers are up to date. Just in the past three or four months (it’s June 2008 as I write this) I’ve seen this kind of screen show up on the vast majority of my updated PCs, when applying the kind of method I’m about to relate.