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Introduction

Nowadays, not many people know how to really take care of their computer. Some assume that the computer looks after itself and that nothing will go wrong. Well after time, without any love or care your computer will slow down and stop doing the normal things that it used to be able to do without effort.

Fortunately, Driver Genius will take care of your computer now and only takes (at the most) a couple of hours to get your PC back up and running smoothly.

About Avanquest Software

Avanquest Software is a world leading developer and publisher of consumer software and business solutions. The Group markets a wide range of best-selling programs developed both in-house and by developer partners throughout all territories and through all sales channels. Founded 20 years ago Avanquest Software possesses one if the most extensive catalogs in the world, now offering more than 1,500 software titles, with an unparalleled breadth of market appeal.

Features

Driver Genius allows the user to:

• Detect and solve any problems using the Device Diagnostics tool
• Remove invalid drivers to improve system performance and stability
• Upgrade drivers to the most recent versions available in just a few clicks
• Synchronize drivers using Live Update with the daily updated database
• Access the NVIDIA driver control panel to find settings or over clocking, AGP, Fan and Stereo control, Open GL 2.0 support and much more.

Impressions

After reading about what the software does, I was impressed and I knew of some computers in my house which could benefit from this software. This was a great opportunity to see if the product did what it says on the tin.

The ‘Driver’ for a piece of hardware is what enables the device to communicate with the computer so that they can do their job. After time, Computer novices won’t know how to upgrade drivers for different hardware, which means that the devices won’t be performing at optimum speed. This is bad as a new driver may fix bugs and problems that previous drivers may have had.

Installation

The installation, like most of Avanquest’s software, was very straightforward. Upon inserting the CD you are shown an installation menu with gives a couple of options such as ‘Install Driver Genius’ and ‘Support’.

Once you have clicked install, you are again prompted by another instruction where you click next on and you are then asked where you would like Driver Genius to be installed depending on where all your other programs are installed.

A pretty cool feature I noticed whilst installing it was that it came with a NVIDIA tweaking program which could be useful as I have an 8600 GT.

You are also asked if you would like to have a desktop icon for the program, for quicker access. The wizard then tells you that installation is complete and asks if you would like to launch the program.

Testing/Usage

Testing was quite simple, as the UI was very well laid out with all the buttons and information in good places.

When you first load Driver Genius up, you are shown a splash screen which basically says Driver Genius and which version you are using, in our case ‘Professional’.

You also get some tips about the software and how to use it but if these annoy you, they are easily turned off by un-ticking the ‘show tips at start-up’ box.

Once you have closed the tips window you receive a prompt to update the drivers database as it is the first time you have used the software.

If you decide to update the database, it will also check to see you are running the latest version of Driver Genius.

Once it has updated the database, you can click other options such as the back-up option (pictured below) where it will ask you where you would like to place the backed-up drivers. I recommend that if you choose desktop, create a folder called drivers as otherwise you may find yourself with a desktop absolutely jam packed with folders.

This roughly only takes a couple of minutes and displays a completion notification. Now you can get on to updating your drivers.

Once you click on ‘Update Drivers’ you are prompted to choose your operating system and as you can see, the range of operating systems go all the way back to Windows 98, so nearly all computers will be able to run this software – even XP and Vista 64bit versions.

Driver Genius found five drivers on my computer that were out of date which were my display drivers, motherboard drivers, wireless LAN driver and monitor driver.

I chose to update my monitor driver for the review seen as though it was one of the smallest in terms of file size.

There are a few more places to go as well such as the uninstall driver function, maybe if a driver was corrupt and caused the hardware to fail.

In the tools section there is a driver download manager to control when drivers are downloaded and a driver diagnostics program to determine if your drivers are corrupt or damaged.

Conclusion

Driver Genius had certainly impressed me with its ability to download and manage all of your drivers. Also, with the ability to back-up, restore and remove, it is the ultimate program for managing your computer hardware’s problems and fixing them.

As your can specify when it updates the drivers, your computer should stay up-to-date for a very long time.

From the evidence shown, I cannot fault the software. It doesn’t seem to have any bugs or locations that don’t work properly either.

Pros

• Detects and solves driver problems
• Removes invalid drivers
• Synchronizes drivers with database
• Over Clocking and other functions for supported NVIDIA graphics cards
• Reliable
• Easy to use
• Good Price

Cons

• Sometimes drivers may not download properly

For the small price of £19.99, it will be affordable to all buyers and is a definite buy for people trying to revitalize their old slow computer.

Driver Genius deserves the editor’s choice award for its brilliance in speeding up slow computers.