Review: Driver Genius
Driver problems? Driver Genius could solve them all. Ian Waugh takes it for a ride...
| Product | Driver Genius |
|---|---|
| Company | Avanquest |
| Web | Driver Genius Professional 8
|
| Price | $29.95/£19.95 |
| We like | One-stop driver update manager |
| We don't like | Hesitant downloads in some instances, license only allows support for two PCs |
| Rating | 8/10 |
| Requirements | Windows 98/98SE/ME /2000/XP/ Server 2003/Vista/XP x64/Server 2003 x64/Vista x64 |
If you tinker with your PC, adding new bits and pieces, you'll know how important it is to have solid drivers. Even older equipment can benefit significantly if newer drivers are released for it. However, unless you regularly search for updates on all the manufacturers' sites, trying to keep track of driver updates is almost impossible.
Driver Genius is essentially a one-stop shop for managing and updating the drivers in your system. It has a database of over 30,000 drivers for motherboards, sound cards, video cards, network cards, modems, mice, keyboards, scanners, printers, and various other digital devices.
The first step, naturally, is to backup your existing drivers. Using the latest drivers for a device can greatly improve its performance but you need to be able to revert to the previous driver just in case something goes wrong.
The program detects all the drivers in your system and can Zip them or create an auto-installer. This allows you to re-install all the drivers with just one click and is perfect if you re-install Windows, for example, as you can easily re-install all the drivers in one go.
Diagnose this
The program includes a Device Diagnostics feature that shows the status of all the devices in your system and reports whether or not it's working, rather like Windows' Device Manager.
The Update Drivers feature searches for device drivers for your system. You can elect not to update specific drivers if you wish. After selection, updated drivers will be downloaded and appear in the list with a green tick next to them.
Right-click on a driver to open it and install it. The installation isn't automatic as you do need to run the driver file. Sometimes this installs a driver directly, other times it may run a setup program.
The process is generally quick and easy and far simpler than manually updating individual drivers.
A Download Manager lets you review the drivers and resume downloads. This worked well and we were grateful for the Resume Download feature as the program kept stopping the download of a large ATI display driver file. In fact we had to restart this several dozen times to get the full file.
We also experienced another download hiccup. A LiveUpdate feature downloads the latest version of the driver database and main program but on our system, it said it couldn't retrieve the update list and asked if we were connected to the Internet. Which we certainly were. However, the update downloaded just fine on another occasion.
The pack also includes an Nvidia Driver Tweak program for tweaking 
the settings of Nvidia graphics cards such as enabling fan control and thermal settings, and accessing hidden options.
Conclusion
If you've ever had trouble with a card or other device and thought the problem might be related to the driver, you'll appreciate the, er, genius, of Driver Genius. Even if you don't make a point of updating system components regularly, updating existing drivers could improve performance and if you've had your PC for any length of time, it could be worth seeing if new drivers are available as the developers may have ironed out bugs and improved performance.
If you have more than one PC, Driver Genius could be a most worthwhile investment to help you keep them running well but note that the license agreement limits its use to two computers which is a little restrictive we think. But as a one-stop-shop for keeping your drivers up to date, it's an excellent investment.
Download a trial version of Driver Genius Professional or buy with a Special Discount.
