Uniblue Driverscanner 2009

It’s important to ensure that your computer's drivers – small programs that tell it what to do with hardware such as printers or graphics cards – are up to date.

Manufacturers periodically fix bugs and vulnerabilities in newer versions, so it's good to have the latest ones.

Windows XP and Vista both have the ability to automatically update hardware drivers using the Windows Update website, but like Driver Genius, which we reviewed recently, Driverscanner scans the PC and allows the user to instantly download the latest drivers.

During tests, Driverscanner was noticeably quicker than Windows Update when locating, downloading and installing drivers. It also gave us more control over the specific hardware to include in the search, which speeds up the process.

However, it didn't cover installed hardware if it wasn't connected to the PC (neither did Driver Genius). In common with its rival it doesn't scan for software, so if your hardware came with utility programs you'll need to keep the original discs to hand.

Driverscanner’s biggest advantage over Windows Update is its ability to back up all of the hardware drivers for the PC and its peripherals to an external storage device in one procedure. This could prove particularly useful in making a copy of drivers for older hardware which might be difficult or impossible to locate online. If you need to completely reinstall Windows you can use the backup to restore all the drivers at once.

However, the program’s effectiveness varied considerably and the level of information provided about the downloaded drivers left something to be desired.

When we tested it on its ability to locate the driver for a USB TV tuner which was not detected at all by Windows XP, Driverscanner failed to notice the device's presence either. And the same test using Vista resulted in the program crashing when it tried to install the driver, whereas Vista itself was able to locate and install the driver successfully.

Nevertheless, Driverscanner remains useful as a utility to conveniently back up and restore drivers. This is especially true if you maintain several PCs in a home or office, with the same hardware for each.