A few months ago I was gifted with an old scanner; just the scanner and no software. The scanner manufacture did not support Windows Vista for this old model, so I was off on the hunt over the Internet to find a driver from another source. A search netted a number of sites that offered updates for drivers. None could help on a Windows Vista driver for the scanner but did offer other driver updates. One such site was DriverMax at www.drivermax.com. They offered “free driver updates.” Free is good! Or so I thought.
DriverMax offers to scan your computer’s drivers and download updated drivers for free. Their offer extends to operating systems Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. They scanned my computer and listed numerous software updates for my HP computer. Thinking that new drivers might improve my computer’s lethargic boot and save processes, I decided to give it a try. After all, it was free.
The first dozen or so new updated drivers downloaded onto my computer with ease. I saw no difference in the operation of my computer with the new drivers. The following week DriverMax notified me that there was a new batch of updated drivers for my computer. Again I downloaded the new updated drivers with no noticeable difference in my computer’s operation until several days later.
Several days had past when I began noticing that shortly after startup, programs would freeze for two to three minutes for no apparent reason. During this period, nothing would work. It happened with almost every startup of the computer and soon after opening the first program. I would often have two or three windows open before everything went into a state of limbo for three or so minutes.
By the time I realized that the new drivers I had downloaded from DriverMax was the source of my problems, it was too late to use the “Restore” feature on Windows Vista as this feature overwrites the older storage points. I puzzled over my next option. The system repair functions in Windows Vista would not correct the now updated but dysfunctional drivers. Time to start from scratch and reload Windows Vista. All I need to do was save all my data and photos. That was about 20 gigabits; twice as much as my old backup hard drive could handle. No problem, I’ll just copy everything over to a few CDs.
That is when I discovered that one of more of the many updated drivers had also corrupted the operation of both my CD drive and DVD drive. Now I am stuck until I can purchase a new larger backup hard drive. Then I can back up all my data, reload Windows Vista, and recover from all those FREE driver updates from DriverMax.
Lessen learned. If you ever decide to try one of these companies that offer to download new drivers for your computer, make yourself a recovery disk. Better yet, since your CD/DVD drive may become inoperable, save your recovery data to a USB storage device. You may just need this to save your crippled computer.
