Driver Cleaner

What is a Driver Cleaner?

A driver cleaner is a piece of software which scans your computer for old, unused, or corrupted device drivers and removes or repairs them.

Anyone who upgrades their computer on a regular basis will have old and unused drivers present in the system files. Often times these drivers do nothing but take up space and clog the system registry. Sometimes though, an old version of a device driver from the same company as your new hardware will interfere with the new ones. For example: You replace your NVIDIA GeForce 8200 with a GeForce 8800 Ultra. The 8200 device drivers will try to load at the same time as the new 8800 Ultra drivers. Usually this won’t happen, but it’s not so rare that you shouldn’t guard against it.

To keep those old drivers from loading, you will have to either manually remove them (including the registry entries), or hope your operating system can uninstall them.

Driver cleaners will automatically search for those older and unused versions of device drivers, and allow you to remove them safely. Most driver cleaner programs will also allow you to try and repair damaged or corrupted drivers.

Another great aspect of most driver cleaner programs is that they will download updated drivers from the programmer’s website, or provide a link to where you can obtain them.

While you usually have to pay for a driver cleaner, they pay for themselves in a short time. A lot of manufacturers make you order a driver installation CD from them. Especially if a new product model has been put out, and they’re no longer supporting the old line. Their support web pages will only have the new model’s drivers available for immediate download.

So, if you don’t have the time, money, patience, and experience to spend on individually removing old and unused drivers (or downloading new drivers), a driver cleaner is a product you can definitely use.