Softpedia
 

NEWS CATEGORIES:



NEWS ARCHIVE >>
SOFTPEDIA REVIEWS >>
MEET THE EDITORS >>
Home > News > Reviews > Windows software reviews

November 24th, 2005, 13:14 GMT · By Alex Muradin

Where's My Driver?

SHARE:

Adjust text size:



My Drivers by HunterSoft See editor's ratings     Request a review
Version reviewed: My Drivers 3.11

My Drivers enables fast and easy detection, backup or restore of all hardware device drivers currently on your system. Also, you can even find the latest drivers for your hardware and install them onto your computer. With just one or two mouse button clicks, you will have all your hardware devices extracted and backed-up to any folder you want. When you reinstall or upgrade your system, you can restore all drivers just by clicking a button. After a reboot, all drivers will be re-installed and will function well. You may also choose to backup a particular driver or all the drivers with an EXE automatic installer. If you have a particular item of hardware that is troublesome, just remove the driver with this software. It is especially useful to those who have lost their Driver Disk or Driver CD. My Drivers is able to clone the original driver installation. My Drivres will also back-up the Favorites in Internet Explorer and Proxy Settings and provides a back-up for settings for Outlook and Outlook Express.


Download My Drivers
Features:

- Automatic Driver Update with 58,600+ latest drivers in database.

- Automatic Driver Extraction and Re-Creation.

- Stand-along EXE Installer Creation.

- Network Backup and Restoration.

- Advanced Driver Removal.

- New Hardware Installation Wizard.

- Restore Driver from any form of medium with a Wizard.

- Hardware Detection independent of installed drivers.

- Hardware Examination detailed down to Chip/Chipset.

- Find Drivers on the Internet with high accuracy.

- Contact Hardware Manufacturer and Vender with ease.

- Detailed Hardware and Driver Information Printing.




Outdated Already?

You build a top-notch computer from scratch, throw in the latest and greatest everything, get it ready for state of the art gaming and by the time you connect to the Internet… BAM it's already out of date and you need to update your drivers. It's not that atypical for something like that to happen. We all know how fast hardware gets outdated, think of Moore's Law. My Drivers offers you the chance to worry no longer at the hassles of upgrading and backing up your computer's drivers. Let's see if it lives up to the claim.

After the easy install, I was immediately smirking to My Driver's icon that looks surprisingly like Hobbes from the comic book 'Calvin and Hobbes'. Ah, memories... I managed to regain my composure and put this program through the rigorous tests of normal reviewing.

The Inner Workings

The interface isn't something that's too difficult to figure out since it's very straightforward. With ten main buttons, it's a little hard to get lost. I did feel like it had a little lack to its luster. With a faded and dull violet as a back color, I thought that the overall look could be a little better.

Since I wanted to ensure I had my main drivers backed up, I went ahead with the "fast collect' option.
In no time, it showed which drivers I needed to backup. But don't hold your breath when the backups finally start, since they might take a while.

It took me close to fifteen minutes to back up the files it 'fast collected'. The complete backup will take much longer. I then went ahead to try and see which drivers I needed to upgrade.

I clicked on the upgrade button and was on my way to having a fully optimized and upgraded system. The upgrade brought
up two drivers that needed my immediate attention.

My Drivers also told me the last date I had updated those specific drivers and compared it to the more recent one that it was getting. The downloads don't always go as smoothly as possible, since you might find the same driver, but from a faster server.

This is where I ran into some trouble with the backup software since it sometimes lagged and crashed when I was downloading the necessary updated drivers. I ran it several times before I realized there was a glitch.

I really did try to get the function to work, but it kept crashing on me whenever it was trying to retrieve and download the appropriate files. I wasn't able to download my NVidia drivers at all, so instead I went online to try and search for the updated versions.

My Drivers identified all the hardware devices on my machine, in their help file, they themselves say that they typically get most (not all) of the devices. This sort of information includes the device model, device manufacturer, chip/chipset manufacturer, OEM name, OEM vender.

My Drivers is capable of identifying over 58,600 drivers. You can even find a driver that will work for a certain device by PnP ID fingerprint comparison, and a compatibility test will be performed before installing a driver.

The Good

It backs up the drivers you need extraordinarily well. It backs everything into neat and tidy folders in a tip-top organized fashion. It works with Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows 2003.

The Bad

When scanning for updates, it does a complete system scan, you can't choose to scan certain hardware. I found out that it has a slight glitch when it comes to downloading your latest drivers. You might be downloading from who knows where when you let it grab your drivers.

The Truth

My Drivers is very organized and backs up your existing hardware drivers quite well. I had some hiccups when it came to upgrading my current drivers, but that only happened for one specific driver. Overall, this product is a good find. It sorts all your backups in an organized fashion and runs on multiple Windows platforms.

Check out some pics below.

Review image

Review image

Review image

Review image

Review image

Review image

Review image

Review image

Review image


EDITOR'S RATINGS:

User Interface: (3/5)
Features: (4/5)
Ease of use: (4/5)
Pricing/Value: (3/5)
Overall: (3/5)
  Final verdict: Good   100% Clean Certified

TELL US WHAT YOU THINK:

10,681 hits · Link to this article · Print article · Send to friend · Subscribe to news

MUST-READ RELATED ARTICLES:

READER COMMENTS:



No user comments yet.
Be the first to express your opinion!
Copyright © 2001-2012 Softpedia. Contact/Tip us at

WindowsGamesDriversMacLinuxScriptsMobileHandheldNews

SUBMIT PROGRAM   |   ADVERTISE   |   GET HELP   |   SEND US FEEDBACK   |   RSS FEEDS   |   UPDATE YOUR SOFTWARE   |   ROMANIAN FORUM