We’re using these programs as examples because we think they’re worth using, and we want to make sure you use them safely. Over the next few pages we’ll expose the clouds lurking within the silver linings of excellent free programs. Even the most reputable programs come with pre-ticked boxes that can cause mayhem on your PC. Big names and booby trapsīut PUPs and other hidden traps – memory-hogging plug-ins, files that spy on you, infuriating upgrade prompts – are not exclusive to shady software. You probably also know that certain download mirror sites, such as Cnet’s pack their installers with dodgy extras that are easy to miss if you’re in a hurry or unfamiliar with the process. PUP stands for ‘potentially unwanted program’, a laughably polite term for unwanted junk that can cause great harm to your PC.īut you know how to avoid them, right? You choose safe, big-name software from trusted companies like VLC, Adobe and AVG, instead of junk-riddled nonsense like Free YouTube Downloader and “too good to be true” freebies like CamStudio, which claims to be a realistic alternative to the superb screen-recording program Camtasia Studio. If you’re worried about an update not installing correctly, you can use the program to create a backup of your system’s drivers, so you can restore them if necessary.You’ll already know your pups from your PUPs (one is a cute young canine, the other is a trouble making program that sneaks into your PC along with reputable software, and can be a right old dog to remove). You can also schedule scans to run periodically. Unlike the best driver update software we reviewed, Auslogics Driver Updater makes you open and install all updates by yourself it doesn’t do it automatically, though it does download the updates for you with one click. On a positive note, when you click on existing and new drivers, Auslogics Driver Updater displays information about their sources and version details.Īlthough the program more or less does what it advertises it can do, it’s not very easy to use. That said, even the best performing app, Driver Booster, only detected 91 drivers, so none of the products we tested were particularly stellar. By comparison, only two other applications fared better. Out of the 149 outdated drivers we installed on our test PC, it identified 75. Auslogics Driver Updater is one of the more capable programs we reviewed.
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