We know you have many choices when it comes to driver update software, or using Windows Update itself. Most people look at the amount of out of date drivers that have been found by a product and determine that the best product is the one that finds the most. It is important that you understand the items that are found in out of date driver results, not just the number of results

Below we are going to go few a few of the reasons that these results between products may vary with Driver Reviver. For those of you that don’t know, Driver Reviver is our flagship driver updating software. What it does is:

1. Scans your PC for out-of-date drivers
2. Downloads new, replacement drivers straight from the source
3. Backs up your existing drivers
4. Installs your new drivers

After restarting your PC, you’ll notice peripherals and hardware working better, fewer crashes and blue screens of death, and fewer bugs. Staying on top of driver updates has never been easier.

But there are many choices for driver update software. There are competing products to ours, and it’s possible to go into Windows Update or the control panel and update each driver by hand. Other products may even show more results after a scan.

So why do the results vary?

There are 4 main reasons that you will see varying results:

1. Driver Reviver doesn’t show updates for USB drivers. Why not? If we were to update a mouse or keyboard driver to a version that didn’t work on your PC (though we’re very careful not to do that), your keyboard or mouse would no longer work, and you’d be unable to fix it.

   It’s likely that your USB device doesn’t need frequent driver updates anyway; if you’ve run Windows Update lately, Windows will automatically detect and install most devices when you first plug them in.

   Below you can see Driver Reviver’s results on a test PC compared to another popular products called Driver Max. Driver Max has a lot of USB drivers found which makes the total number of out of date drivers higher.

   
   You can see that Driver Reviver doesn’t list any specific USB devices — it does list the internal USB controller, which is safe to update.
   
   Competing products, like DriverMax, show this USB mouse; if this update fails for any reason, you could be locked out of using your mouse in order to fix it.

2. Drivers vs Hardware. One tactic for increasing the amount of out of date items found is showing all of the devices that have an out of date driver rather than listing the drivers out of date. The reasons that this can lead to different results is that sometimes you might have multiple devices that all use the same driver. If you count the devices rather than the driver you will get a higher number. Driver Reviver shows out of date drivers, not devices with out of date drivers.
3. Not all manufacturers submit drivers to Microsoft for Windows update. Windows Update only shows driver updates that have passed a long certification process by Microsoft. Many hardware manufacturers who make drivers don’t bother submitting drivers to Microsoft for really old devices and instead just publish the drivers immediately on their own site for people to come and download. Since Driver Reviver sources its drivers directly from manufacturers rather than from Windows Update we have a higher chance of finding out of date drivers.
4. Frequency in getting new drivers. Since most driver updater companies get their drivers from device manufacturers then the frequency in which they check for new drivers will determine their likelihood for of finding the newest drivers when they are released. We are always looking for new drivers to include in the Driver Reviver results, this requires a lot of work but delivers the best results.

All of these reasons lead to one conclusion: Driver Reviver is the best method to keep all of your PC’s drivers updated, all the time.

If you’d like to know what drivers are and why updating them is important, take a look at Five Reasons to Keep Your Drivers Fresh.