DRIVER : Snappy Driver Installer/Better than DriverPack Solution

 Snappy Driver Installer/Better than DriverPack Solution

Snappy Driver Installer

If you lost your discs with drivers, unable to find drivers on manufacturer's website or Windows Update cannot to configure your hardware, you can use this tool to find and install all missing drivers.

If you're a PC technician, you can keep the tool on your USB flash drive or external hard drive and use it wherever you go, even it in enviroments with no Internet access. You can also use it after performing a clean installation of Windows.

FREE	No limitations. No premium features. No adware. No gotchas.
Portable	Keep it on your USB flash drive and use it on the go. No installation is necessary.
Up-to-date	You'll be notified whenever updated drivers and the tool become available.
Accurate	The state of the art in algorithm of finding best matching drivers for any devices.
Open source	Licensed under GNU GPL v3.0. You can review the source code and submit patches.
Multilingual	Twenty languages are supported. Your language is probably among them.
Customizable	Pick any theme you like or make your own.

Difference between DriverPack Solution and SamDrivers.

SamLab (he's a person) makes driverpacks for his SamDrivers and the same driverpacks are also used by DriverPack Solution. SamDrivers includes 3 applications for driver installation as opposed to only one in DriverPack Solution. It should be noted that SamDrivers’s edition of DriverPack Solution is modified: expert mode is enabled by default, disabled downloading and executing of a JS script from the Internet, removed some bloatware, etc. Since some bloatware isn’t available in English, so you’re better off using SamDrivers anyway.

SamLab recommend using Snappy Driver Installer (included in SamDrivers) and here is why.

He is a former DriverPack Solution developer. The application is written in JavaScript which is very slow and throws scripting errors due different versions of IE. Support for IE 6.0 can’t be dropped because Windows XP comes with it and it would be inconvenient to require the user to install IE 8.0 before running DriverPack Solution.

The current implementation of algorithm of choosing and installing drivers is made entirely by Him. Since He left DPS, there was no one on the DPS team who understands that code enough to be able to work on it. If you take a closer look at the DPS updates over the last year, you'll see that only GUI and bloatware are being updated. This means that long known problems (notably, sound drivers, touchpad instead of mouse and Intel USB 3.0) were never addressed and aren’t likely to ever be fixed.

He had been planning to rewrite DPS from scratch in C/C++ for a long time while fixing all known problems but He end up creating Snappy Driver Installer which is techically a fork and rewrite of DPS. It’s faster, smaller, more stable, better at finding the correct drivers.
You can read more there: https://code.google.com/p/snappy-driver-installer/
You can also fill a bug report, provide a translation to your language and etc via Issues on Google Code.

SamDrivers includes:

1. DriverPack Solution(DPS)
2. Drivers Installer Assistant(DIA)
3. Snappy Driver Installer(SDI)

Let’s compare them.

Size

DPS - 34 MB (291 files)
DIA - 44 MB (189 files)
SDI - 1.3 MB (42 files) Without localization and themes - 1 MB(one file).

Dependance and standaloneness

DPS - Depends on IE. Writes to registry.
DIA - Depends on vbscript libraries. Installs them without asking the user.
SDI - Works on Windows 2000 and above(including WindowsPE). Doesn't leave traces in the system.

Indexing time

DPS - 280 secs (4:40)
DIA - 123 secs (2:03)
SDI - 19 secs (13 secs on indexing and 6 secs on compressing)

Start up time

DPS - 10 secs
DIA - 3 secs
SDI - 0.5 sec

Driver selection algorithm

DPS - It has many well known problems which are fixed in SDI.
DIA - It used to lag behind DPS but at this point it catched up with DPS.
SDI - It takes in account much more information about devices and drivers. It’s possible to see a full list of compatible drivers for each device and pick a driver manually but it’s not required since the list is sorted that best drivers end up being on in the beginning of the list. The point is DPS doesn’t do driver ranking.

Installation method

DPS - devcon.exe. It is as reliable as installing via Device Manager.
DIA - DPInst.exe. It often fails to install even correctly picked drivers.
SDI - Win32API. It is as reliable as installing via Device Manager. Automatically clicks on “Continue” when asked about installing unsigned drivers.

Hints

You don't have to burn it on a DVD or mount the ISO in a virtual drive. You can extract the content of the ISO and keep on USB flash stick or an external drive.
You can strip SamDrivers off everything everything but Snappy Driver Installer:
Drivers\*.* (driverpacks)
Tools\SDI\*.* (localizations and themes)
Indexes\SDI\*.* (optional, SDI will reindex driverpacks when needed)
SDI-drv.exe (the application)

Screenshot

Installing Drivers



Updating driverpack within the app.



Download

Snappy Driver Installer LITE

This version is ideal if your Internet is slow or you don't plan on using the tool to install/update drivers on many PCs. Just run the tool and download indexes containing driver database and you'll be presented with a list of drivers available for download.

Download source	Size	Version
SourceForge	3.6 MB	R423
MajorGeeks	3.6 MB	R423

Snappy Driver Installer FULL

This version is ideal if you want to be able to use the tool on the go without any Internet connection. You need to use a torrent client in order to download it.

Download source	Size	Version
Torrent	12.0 GB	R423