This was a free offering on January 5, 2010 from GiveAwayOfTheDay!
What is it?
Driver Magician is a Driver Update Utility for Windows. It has some great features, is easy to use, and is well maintained. Lets take a look at it.
Options
Driver Magician includes 2 option screens, Driver Backup Options & Driver Restoration Options.
The Driver Backup Options allows you to change how the drivers are backed up. Your options are:
- Back up drivers to folders – Creates a “Drivers Backup” folder in the folder you choose, and creates a separate folder for each driver to be backed up in that.
- Back up drivers to a compressed file – Creates a “Drivers Backup” folder in the folder you choose and creates a MyDrivers.bck file which can be renamed to .zip and explored. It has the same structure, a separate folder for each driver with the driver files in those.
Note: if you change the extension to .zip to explore it, you’ll need to change it back to .bck if you want to use the internal restore feature. - Back up drivers to a self-extractor (EXE) – Creates a “Drivers Backup” folder in the folder you choose and creates MyDrives.exe there. Running this allows you to choose a folder where all of the driver folders will be extracted to.
- Back up drivers o an auto-setup package (EXE) – Creates a “Drivers Backup” folder in the folder you choose and creates DriverAutoSetup.exe there. Running this will present you with a list of drivers backed up in that version from which you can choose what you need, and then install. This exe continues to work, even after uninstalling Driver Magician!
The last 3 options allow you to choose your compression level as well. Your options are: None, Low, Medium (default) and High.
The Driver Restoration Options screen lets you choose what type of backup you want to restore from. It has the same first 3 options as the Driver Backup Options screen. Additionally, it has these “Other” options:
- Show alert message when restoring drivers (defaults to checked)
- Reboot computer after drivers restoration without prompt
Driver Magician Main App Screen
The main application screen starts you in Backup mode, and includes a list of your drivers, with the Class, Version, Date & Provider listed next to the Driver Description. From the toolbar you can click the Restore button to switch to Restore mode. Doing so will prompt you where to restore from (it remembers the last place you restored to that matches what you’ve chosen in the Driver Restoration Options.
Both the Backup and Restore buttons on the toolbar have a drop-down option that will let you switch between:
- Search All Drivers
- Search Non-Microsoft Drivers (the default)
The program doesn’t indicate which view you’re in, but you can tell because Microsoft Drivers show up in Black (and say “Microsoft” in the Provider field.)
I believe “Search Non-Microsoft Drivers” is the default because, presumably, you are updating your Microsoft Drivers via Windows Update, but that is pure speculation on my part.
In Backup Mode you can check off as many drivers as you like (or click the Select All button) and then click “Start Backup”. This will prompt you for a location to create the “Drivers Backup” folder where the type of backup you’ve chosen in the Driver Backup Options screen will be stored.
I suggest doing a full backup of all drivers before doing anything else. =)
In Restore Mode you have the same sort of interface, but instead of “Start Backup”, you have “Start Restore”.
Driver Update Window
Clicking the Update Button opens the Update Drivers window and Driver Magician will begin searching for newer drivers than what you have installed on your system. Once complete, you’ll be presented with a window like you see to the right. Before you click on a driver, there is a message in the bottom text area that mentions using Internet Explorer when you click the “Download” button. This isn’t necesarily true. It will use your default browser to open the driver, which in my case, is FireFox (and hopefully in your case it is something other than IE, like FireFox, Chrome, Opera or Safari.)
One disappointment to me was that this screen doesn’t include any of my current driver’s information. You can’t even go back to the main Driver Magician window because the Update Drivers window is modal (ie, won’t let you do anything else in the app until you deal with it.)
I would love to see this screen include 4 more columns: Current Version, Latest Version, Current Version Date, Latest Version Date.
Here you can see what happens to the text area when you select a driver. It gives you some details about the new driver (again, lacking any information about the currently installed version.) Each driver you click on gives you the following details in the text area:
- Supported OS
- Driver Provider
- Driver Version
- Digitally Signed (Yes/No)
- Release Date
- File Size
- Download URL
Clicking the download button with any driver selected will open the download URL in your default web browser.
Other Notes
Driver Magician includes a LiveUpdate feature that will connect to the Driver Magician servers and automatically download and install the latest updates to the software, namely, the database of latest drivers. I recommend doing this each time you run the application. This would be a nice feature to add as well, something allowing us to choose how often to check for updates, with “Every time I start the app” being an option.
Conclusion
I give this program 2 thumbs up! The backup & restore options are great, and the driver update is great. I’d recommend it to just about any user, especially if you’re having any troubles at all with your system. Just be sure to backup your drivers first so you can easily down-grade if necessary!
If you missed out on the free giveaway, you can purchase Driver Magician for $29.95, it is well worth the investment!
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