Updating hardware drivers through Windows Update

[Gordon]

The received wisdom in the XP world, was "do not use Windows Update to
update hardware drivers". Has that changed at all in Vista? (I'm being
offered optional updates to my wireless card in Windows Update...)

Thanks

 

[Malke]

The received wisdom in the XP world, was "do not use Windows Update to
update hardware drivers". Has that changed at all in Vista? (I'm being
offered optional updates to my wireless card in Windows Update...)

No.

Malke

 

[Gordon]

No.

Thanks - I thought so!

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

IMO this has always been overblown. It really doesn't have anything to do
with Vista. It is just a matter of some folks being of the opinion that the
same drivers are somehow better if gotten from the manufacturer rather than
from WU. They are all the same drivers anyway, except that they should show
up on the mgs's site a few days or weeks before WU. MS doesn't write or
modify them. I will be flamed for this but so be it.

 

[RalfG]

No flame but they are not always the same drivers at Windows Update. At
least not the more complex ones. By way of example Windows update
continually tries to offer me a nearly 2 year old driver for my ATI card,
despite the fact that I already have the most current one installed. As well
as that the driver being offered does not include the appropriate Catalyst
configuration utility. The extended settings are either missing when just
the WU driver is installed or if Catalyst CC is already present on the
computer it becomes corrupted when the version doesn't match the driver's. A
similar thing happens with the audio drivers from WU. The WU driver
installed automatically with a clean install of Vista but right away some of
the audio outputs were non-functional. Certain speaker configurations
wouldn't work in Windows or even be shown as an option in Media Center.
There are other examples that I've encountered as well, such as WU WiFi
adapter drivers that invariably blue screened and even incorrect webcam
drivers (wrong camera model being detected).

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

My point is that the advice to never use WU drivers is overblown.