Snappy Driver Installer – Solving Driver Management Headaches

Guest post by David Goodwin
“Let me just get this driver installed real quick” – 15 minutes later you finally find the correct driver and get it installed only after numerous failed attempts. Now it’s on to the next driver that needs to be installed and yet again another 15 minutes passes by.

By the time you’re finished, you have just spent a fairly long length of time locating and installing drivers. Well good news, this is now a thing of the past. Snappy Driver Installer (SDI) is a free, trusted driver installation and updating utility to alleviate your headaches and free up more of your time.

A Huge Time Saver

I’m sure most of us have installed drivers at one point or another in our lives and know how frustrating it is to try and find the correct driver in a reasonable amount of time. What’s worse is not having the network interface driver installed and can’t get online to even attempt to find the rest of your missing drivers. The time savings appear to substantial using SDI to manage your drivers, what used to take 11+ steps now only takes 3, using the Driverpack version for example:

Installing unknown device drivers the manual way:

• Right click on Computer/My Computer/ThisPC
• Go to “Manage”
• Go to “Device Manager”
• Expand “Other Devices”
• Right click on the device in question
• Go to “Properties”
• Go to “Details”
• Choose “Hardware IDs” from the dropdown menu
• Write this information down
• Open a web browser and use the PCI vendor and device list search to obtain the make and model of the hardware device
• Go to the manufacturer’s website and obtain the correct driver

Total time taken: 15 minutes to 1 hour +

Installing an unknown driver using Snappy Driver (SDI) Installer with Driverpacks:

• Open Snappy Driver Installer
• Create a system restore point (built into Snappy Driver Installer)
• Put a checkmark next to the driver you need to install and click install

Total time taken: 1 minute, give or take.

As you can see the number of steps taken are drastically less with SDI and the amount of time taken to install an unknown device driver go from potentially hours to minutes.

The Difference Between the Two Downloads of Snappy Driver Installer (SDI)

Snappy Driver Installer v0.2 (SDI) standalone (smaller download, better suited for locations with internet access):

• You are presented with the option to automatically check for updates to the Driverpacks (if you have them) as well as the program itself, this is the same in both downloads.
• You have the option right in SDI to create a system restore point, incase anything goes wrong, this is the same in both downloads.
• Utilizing the version without Driverpacks, you are presented only with the drivers that are missing from your computer and system information. The system information however is highly useful as it contains the operating system version, CPU architecture, Motherboard Model number, power and monitor information as well as the location of drivers in the file system.
• Compatible with Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7

Snappy Driver Installer v0.2 (SDI) with Driverpacks (larger download, better suited for locations without internet access):

• Has all the features of SDI standalone version.
• Utilizing the version with Driverpacks, SDI presents you with a list of installed and uninstalled drivers with the current driver version information.
• A state of the art algorithm checks that currently the currently installed list of drivers and whether or not a newer or more optimal version exists in the Driverpacks database.

The Additional Features

SDI also contains a lot of other useful features including the ability the run unattended and automatically restart your computer after driver installation. Along with the ability run at the command line and accept a full library of options and switches for custom scripts and integrations. SDI can also automatically update not only the program itself but the Driverpacks database, so you can always ensure you have the most up to date installation of SDI and drivers.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of all the additional features included with Snappy Driver Installer. Take a look at what Snappy Driver Installer can do: https://code.google.com/p/snappy-driver-installer/

Skepticism Laid To Rest

As with most folks, I was always skeptical about driver installation programs as I saw them as either malicious or installing third party drivers that were not digitally signed by the manufacturer. This is not the case with the drivers that get installed with Snappy Driver Installer. The drivers are provided from 2 different sources, the Windows Update Catalog and Driverpacks from Driverpacks.net.

Each of these sources pride themselves on providing the newest and most up to date drivers from Microsoft or directly from the manufacturer’s website. To verify the integrity of these drivers, one can use a built in tool from windows XP onward called “sigverif.exe”. Let SDI install or update a driver and run the sigverif.exe utility and you will not see that driver on the list of offending, unsigned drivers, letting you know the driver was legitimate. I will be adding this freeware program to my personal software tool-kit for sure.

Guest post by by Dave Goodwin: Dave is a Systems Administrator for an international manufacturing plant and the owner of a local MSP. His passions include, fishing, biking, archery and spending time with his family. Google+ – Facebook – Twitter