It is important to have up-to-date drivers for a PC to work well. But finding and installing the right drivers is a painful chore. Completely free and ad-free, Snappy Driver Installer helps you find the latest ones.
Windows Update spends a good part of its time checking the availability of updates for the Windows system but also for the drivers (or drivers, in English) of some important components or peripherals of the PC. However, it does not excel in precision. While it can detect the presence of newer drivers for parts of the computer, it misses out on many other updates from manufacturers. And, even the PC manufacturer can also ignore recent versions for components that are nevertheless well in the machine.
To get to the bottom of it, there are several online services like All Drivers but also specialized software such as DriverBooster from iObit or Driver Easy which claim to be free but which often turn out to be limited and do not hesitate to shower you with advertisements in order to make you migrate to a full – and therefore paid – version. Snappy Driver Installer does not. Developed in open source, this utility in French allows you to find the most recent drivers for the components of your PC. It does not display any advertising and is completely free (you can however support the work of volunteer developers by making a donation). Its interface is, of course, quite dated, but it doesn’t matter: Snappy Driver Installer does its job correctly by listing the most recent drivers available on the Web and allowing them to be installed. What more ?
How to update drivers with Snappy Driver Installer?
With just a few clicks, Snappy Driver Installer can check for driver updates for your PC’s components.
► Start by downloading Snappy Driver Installer. Unzip the Zip archive then run the SDI_x64_R2201 program if you are using a 64-bit version of Windows or SDI_2201 for another version. Be careful, when launching, Windows may pop up an alert indicating that the program is not safe. This is a false positive. Snappy Driver Installer must indeed access sensitive layers of the system to work. If such an alert pops up, click on the link Further information.
► In the next window, choose Run anyway.
► Finally, allow Snappy Driver Installer to pass through the Windows firewall by clicking on Allow Access.
► When the software is launched, click on the button Download indexes only. The tool will then check the drivers in place on the PC and compare them with the versions available on the Internet. The other options allow you to download the drivers before proceeding with the verification, so that you can then proceed with the updates without being connected to the Internet.
► The verification starts and continues with the downloading of the appropriate drivers.
► At the end of the operation Snappy Driver Installer reveals the results. It lists for each category the drivers unearthed on the Web. Click on the arrow at the end of the line corresponding to an element to obtain more details.
► Snappy Driver Installer thus indicates the presence of an old or recent driver on the Web. Place the mouse pointer on the line (without clicking).
► In the tooltip which is displayed, there is the complete detail of the driver including the date of its last update and the signature of the editor.
► Do you want to install the new driver? First check the box at the top of the window Create a restore point in the section Options. This would allow you to roll back if the driver was not suitable for your computer.
► Then tick the box next to the driver you want to update and click the green button Install at the top right of the window.
► Snappy Driver Installer creates a restore point then installs the update.
► Once it is finished, it informs you of the need or not to restart the PC. Click in the orange zone which flashes to hide the newly installed drivers in the list then perform a restart of the PC. It is recommended to proceed by successive keys and not to install all the new drivers at once. In the event of a malfunction, it would be difficult to determine the culprit. In addition, nothing obliges you to install the most recent drivers if your PC is running like clockwork. Unless it is to fix a security flaw.
