Get a FREE fully-working copy of Steganos Security Suite 7 (worth £49.99) when you sign up to the Practical PC Newsletter. Review: DriverMax V4.3
Don Bradbury looks for a free driver reporting, backup and updating program
| Product | DriverMax v4.3 |
|---|---|
| Company | Innovative Solutions |
| Web | www.innovative-sol.com |
| Price | Free |
| We like | Comprehensive reporting. Driver backup and download options |
| We don't like | Currently only for 32-bit Vista and XP |
| Rating | 8/10 |
| Requirements |
A typical Windows computer, with all it's installed hardware, will include very many drivers. These are the little bits of code that tell your items of hardware how to interact with the computer. They're vital components of any computer, but they can and do get broken, as with any type of programming. System glitches, crashes, and computer maloperations in general can disengage drivers, corrupt them, or interfere with badly written program code. It's vital, therefore, that you should be in a position to locate and reload the correct, uncorrupted drivers when a system failure of this nature occurs.
That process usually means finding the disks that you originally used to make the installation, whether it be Operating System or an item of hardware, in order to point Device Manager to their location when you need them. That's easier said than done, as many will attest. For starters, 'CDs get lost' could be the motto of all computer users. So a program such as Innovative Solutions' DriverMax, coming completely free to all, has the potential to make an ideal companion for a busy but frustrated PC user when things go wrong.
Installation is a breeze. Just go to www.innovative-sol.com/drivermax/ and download the installation file to your Windows Desktop.
Run the executable file by double-clicking on it, and then opt to register the product online to get your (also free) registration code so that you can use all the program's facilities. Copy/Paste (or if you must, type in) the code. We had originally used version 3.4 but recently installed v4.2 over the top and then v4.3, needing only to clear our specified drivers backup folder in order to store the current driver set. The latest version showed fewer bugs, and worked well, within the confines we outline here.
Neatly laid-out menus guide you through the process of taking a full backup of your drivers. The default location is on your C: drive, but that can be changed to whatever you want. We chose our backup partition, and shortened the folder location to something easily remembered, D:\MyDrivers.
The most recent backup process was reasonably quick on our test PC, and 50% faster than with the original v3.4, but there's a lot of searching, analysing, and then disk writing to do so sit back or take a break while this completes.
There are menu options for viewing your driver listing, with the main one showing the driver's date, the version number, the number of files involved, whether it's of Microsoft origin, and whether or not it's digitally signed. There's also a 'details' tag which expands the report for those with the interest to browse it.
You'll discover that the report includes drivers for all the hardware that you have at any time connected to your computer, whether it's currently in use or not. That's on the presumption that you will at some point attach the device again. It's a complete listing then, though we did note that the drivers for our IrDA Fast InfraRed Port were reported as missing (as also reported in v3.4), even though Device Manager said this capability was functioning correctly. The backup process was halted to report this until we told it to carry on, but the final log the program produced showed that the IrDA drivers were, in fact, backup up correctly.
Innovative Solutions made themselves available for technical questions via email, which was nice considering that this is a free utility.
Driver Updates
Whether your drivers are the latest that are available is reported by the program, and in the latest version 4.3, Innovative Solutions offers a decent list of driver updates, though only for Vista 32-bit and XP at present.
Just because there's an update available doesn't, of course, mean that that device will not work with it's present driver - indeed it's possible that the update will work worse than the current one - but there are usually advantages to updating by way of stability, security, or operational speed. In any event, Windows lets you roll-back a driver installation if you happen to hit trouble. We needed that facility when we updated the driver for our Realtek HD Audio, the new driver failing to let headphones automatically take over from speakers when plugged in. The old driver worked better in that respect.
DriverMax keeps a log of it's operations while creating the backup files and folder, and this reports any problems that may be encountered. It's a useful summary of your present driver installations.
In conclusion
Version 4.3 of Innovative Solutions' DriverMax gave us the security of having all our drivers fully backed up and all in one location of our own choosing. We copied them to a backup CD for further security. When the time comes for us to have to reinstall any items on the computer that are inoperative, slow, or otherwise deficient, we know where to find them and will be able to point Device Manager to them directly rather than rummaging around for program or device install disks. The same applies when we have to carry out a system reinstall. Full backups of a system will, of course, contain all your current drivers, but we'd prefer to have a more convenient source to refer to in case of minor emergencies such as a corrupted file.
