What's the best way to handle drivers on a freshly installed Win10?

Hello stability lovers, How y’all doin’?

I’ve recently reinstalled windows 10 on my Yoga 720-15IKB Laptop (ideapad) - Type 80x7 (to be exact :wink: ) bought in 2017 or 18’ and am wondering if and how should I update my drivers.

This is a laptop i aim at live performance so I try to keep it as stable and as clean as possible. I think I’d like to skip vantage and not to have something excess on my machine. especially the kind that likes to run in the backround. or any other ongoing in the backround thing, or any excess software at all…

The drivers listed on the Lenovo site are from 2018 tops. Should I download some drivers from straight from the manufacturer ? e.g. NVIDIA or Intel?

Most importantly: should I download any additional drivers at all? everything seems to be working fine right now. there are some unkown devices in the device manager but I havn’t encountered any problem so far.

thx in advance,

cheers

Hi Ofer and Welcome!

With Win 10 being a creature that updates a lot the drivers it provides for stock laptops that are newer are usually the best bet. However there were updates that caused previously working drivers to need update that were 3rd party issues. If you use a USB Audio interface then the drivers from their site are the way to go, the Realtek drivers for most system sound cards are fine that come with Win10 drivers. The developer wrote a good guide on optimizing for Audio here

https://www.cantabilesoftware.com/glitchfree

Any specific stuff that comes up hopefully we can help …

Cheers,

Dave

I use a program called Snappy Driver Installer Origin. Terrible name and UI but works really well for me…

Can be found here…

https://www.snappy-driver-installer.org/

It was recommended to me by my system builder (Scan 3XS in the uk) and has worked well for me.

Plus what @dave_dore said…

Cheers.

P

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Save a disc image before install new drivers, or, at least, go to System Protection and create a restore point. When you are sure the new drivers are OK, disable the System Protection. It’s one of the background task, better keep it off in music PC.

I second that. Optimizing a Windows computer is an absolute must for real-time audio and Glitch Free is by far the best guide that I’ve seen. @Ofer, it’s a bit long so if you want to skip the preface, I’d recommend at least going to the actionable steps in chapters 4 and 5.

Thanks for the help guys,

I’ve got so many different opinions about this. wow. for now I think I’ll stick with whatever windows 10 finds and maybe when I have all my setup up and running again i’ll try installing some drivers after a system restore point to see if i get any improved performance

and I’ve read through the glitch free guide, it’s great!

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Check here too. Quite interesting…