Upgrading computer windows 10 should i download drivers

I have not yet failed to get a piece of hardware up and working. Please do not get me wrong, there will be some hardware out there which will cause issues.

This has been my experience to date. As far as windows 10 GUI is concerned, I do not like it, and here I am going to cause a swarm in the hornets nest. Lets go back to Windows 8 release. When Windows 8 was released I cursed it every single day for 2 weeks. I never missed the start menu, once I found my feet. All the hype around the missing start menu, I never quite understood.

I could go to my start menu Metro Screen and start typing and it would find the program I was looking for. How easy is that. As for Linux, it is robust, and very versatile and is free for all intents and purposes. Before you start haranguing me, I do use Linux. Was it an easy setup, NO, but it works brilliantly, and it is free. The issue here is that the majority of the general public do not understand the command prompt and would therefore find it extremely difficult to make any changes.

Therefore I would never advise them to go Linux. Unfortunately that is the reality of the situation. Libre Office is a nice toy but only a toy. My upgrades 3 machines were uneventful until I tried to access my files — on a separate hard drive. I was unable to access many, which I had just created or downloaded or were anything between 1 day and 10 years old.

W10 seems very picky about sharing permissions. Now resolved, but frustrating at the time. Here Are 12 Fixes. So it's a safe bet to say the distribution and Windows Update versions will keep your machine running reliably and stable for sure. But if you must have to get some additional functionality not provided with the distribution or Windows Update drivers then as long as the driver version is newer I'd say it can't hurt to install whatever the actual manufacturer of the given hardware provides.

The only exception might be for laptops which sometimes to actually have drivers tailored for that specific hardware. If I use the Dell supplied driver QuickSync offloads all the encoding to the GPU when I select that encoder but with the Intel provided driver which is a newer version the QuickSync functionality doesn't work properly - it pushes the encoding to the CPU and it takes a little longer.

Recommendation: unless you have an actual requirement for something the manufacturer's updated driver provides could be a Control Panel thing as noted, or just a better performing driver for a GPU since again the Windows Update drivers are meant for stability and not performance I'd say use the distribution drivers and let Windows Update handle updating them whenever a new one becomes available.

Tiberian said:. Click to expand Joined Feb 19, Messages 18, John said:. Joined Jun 21, Messages 3, Sounds good. Thanks everryone. Best Apple Watch. Best iPad Cases. Best Portable Monitors. Best Gaming Keyboards. Best Drones. Best 4K TVs. Best iPhone 13 Cases. Best Tech Gifts for Kids Aged Awesome PC Accessories.

Best Linux Laptops. Best Bluetooth Trackers. Best eReaders. Best Gaming Monitors. Best Android Phones. Browse All News Articles. Xbox Series X Bundle. Windows Zero Day. Xbox Virtual Museum. Windows 11 Emoji. Resolved my issue. Clear instructions. Easy to follow. No jargon. Pictures helped. Didn't match my screen. Incorrect instructions.