Is there a program that can see if your drivers are upto date?

I want to check if my drivers are upto date

 

There's only one driver updater/checker I trust, and that's SlimDrivers. I won't touch any other driver program with a ten-foot pole...it hasn't been updated in a while, but version 2.3.1.0 has been reliable/trustworthy for many years. You can download it from MajorGeeks, FileHippo, etc. HIGHLY recommended.

I must note that 2.3.x requires a processor with SSE support; 2.2.x and older need only MMX.

 

I have all my drivers from my manufacturers (dell) website, saved to a flash drive, all are updated as far as dell, Intel lists more updates, but an oem driver is specific to that oem and intel will tell you (when their scan for xp worked) that the indicated driver is an oem driver and should not be updated.

I had tried various driver updaters (free) and had to remove all, I have gotten by with my drivers and no longer try to get any updates.

 

I agree with you, Elizabeth--ideally, it is best to get drivers from the manufacturer's website as much as you possibly can. SlimDrivers can come in handy when you don't have that luxury...for example, my HP Pavilion Slimline S5-1020 was designed for Windows 7 but I found out it's fully XP-compatible; you don't even have to tweak BIOS settings to get it to install. HP only offers 64-bit Windows 7 & 8 drivers for this PC, but SlimDrivers helped me to locate XP-specific drivers for every device on the motherboard. So it can be useful! It is especially helpful when you're attempting to install XP on very modern hardware (i.e., Haswell-era or newer), since virtually all manufacturers have flat-out stopped offering (or at least listing) XP drivers for most of their desktop/laptop models released in the last few years.

 

now you just need to copy those downloaded drivers to a safe storage so you will not need slimdriver

 

Try it before you knock it! You can rest assured that SlimDrivers is a VERY good program. If it wasn't, I wouldn't be recommending it to anyone--my tolerance for bad software is as low as that of anyone you will ever meet in your lifetime. I am happy to help others. In fact, that's why I joined this forum: so I could share my hard-won knowledge about XP with Vista/7/8/8.1/10 refugees and other longtime enthusiasts.

I'm not sure where SD saves its downloaded drivers, and/or if it clearly labels them whereby you know which driver does what (when I download drivers from the manufacturer's site for a given desktop/laptop PC model, for example, I always label them as 'chipset.exe,' 'video.exe,' 'audio.exe', etc. and save them in a folder labeled with the model name). All I can tell you is that SlimDrivers has never given me any trouble, and it won't give anyone trouble as long as they follow a proper installation order (chipset driver first, then video driver, then audio driver, then network drivers, and then all the other miscellaneous drivers last).

In all cases except those where the manufacturer's website does NOT provide and/or list XP drivers for a given desktop/laptop model I advise downloading drivers from the official Dell, HP, etc. websites. For newer models (and there are many) for which XP drivers are not listed, SlimDrivers can come in handy. Like I said before, it helped me get my HP Pavilion Slimline S5-1020 fully functional with XP (the HP site only provides 64-bit Windows 7/8 drivers for that model). If you're running a modern (5th-generation Core or better) PC, you're going to be hard-pressed to get XP 100% working (i.e. with all motherboard devices operational) without a driver updater/checker program. It's like fighting for the heavyweight championship of the world and only being able to throw left hands for the entire twelve-round (it should still be fifteen, but I digress) duration (you couldn't throw a right at any time; if you did, you would immediately be disqualified).

 

Well, I can agree with you that for the newer models it may be handy, I did try it but the drivers it said I needed to update the newer ones were incompatible with my pc, so I uninstalled all the drivers and then reinstalled all my original dell drivers.

If the option is available, I choose download and then install myself, that way I can save the download to a flash drive for future use. Dell stores its drivers on my c drive
and I also have them saved into individual folders so I know which is which as they have to be installed in a certain order.

 

Ah, okay. I guess it depends from situation to situation. In general I don't use SlimDrivers to update my drivers; only to get my system set up. Once my drivers are installed I NEVER update them...I've had updates completely ruin installations in the past. When you have something that works, in all but the rarest cases it's best to just leave it alone.

SlimDrivers tends to come in handy for older models that are seeing their support/driver pages taken down, and for newer models for which XP drivers are not readily available or can be difficult to find. In all other cases I recommend getting drivers from the website of the manufacturer. Thankfully, most still keep XP drivers on their websites, but I can't help but worry that this is going to change at some point; HP/Compaq took down all of their Win98 drivers, from what I recall. I think Dell's site still has 98 drivers.

In general, you have to be careful with driver programs. As I said before, SlimDrivers is the only one I trust (and I've tried a few). I always try to find drivers from the manufacturer's site first. If they don't have XP drivers for a model, then I fire up SlimDrivers. Thank you for sharing your methods, Elizabeth...I like the idea of having an individual folder for each driver you'll be installing!