How to update an Acer laptop with drivers and utilities?

[rickywatson]

Some general update software shows that a lot of Acer drivers/utilities on my Acer Notebook is out of date, though they do not give a download location.

So, what is the best way to keep the Acer laptop up to date with Acer-stuff?

[ericinboston]

Hi.

1)You should only trust MS Windows or Acer as programs/software telling you to update drivers on your computer. Do not trust 3rd party/freeware applications that promise to maintain your drivers.

2)Get in the habit of backing up your computer every few months...or especially right before you start upgrading stuff. There is a longer thread about backups in the General forum from last year. How to Clone/Backup your Netbook


-Eric

[ThisIsNot]

You can always download the updated directly from Acer's (at least for drivers and Acer software) if all else fails. As eric stated, you should not be relying on 3rd party applications for Windows, program, and driver updates. They easily integrate themselves into Windows and are nothing more than ways to get you to buy the ability to download the drivers.

I had the unfortunate experience of having to remove a highly recommended program that could find and install missing drivers and ones that needed updating. The program and driver scan were free but you had to pay to unlock the ability to download the drivers. It integrated itself so far into Windows that even running a Google search containing the word "driver" would automatically take you to its home page.

There are only two programs that you can really trust; an update program from Acer (if they have one, I don't use mine and I uninstalled everything Acer related on my nettop so I can't look at that) and Microsoft Windows Update. Those are the only programs that you should trust for downloading and installing Windows and driver updates (other programs should update themselves).