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Well I’m now seeing the trend in Driver Cleaner products becoming all the rage.  Buy software to remove old drivers.  In the past I’ve never had issues trying to upgrade drivers UNLESS I changed manufacturer.  Like if I went from ATI to nVidia or vice versa, I’d have problems.  Today when I do this I don’t see the same problems, just uninstall the old and install the new.

Recently though I’ve been having some problems with some very expensive video cards and wanted to experiment with them to find out what is up with them.  So I contacted the manufacturer support who I must plug. EVGA is the manufacturer and one of the FEW with:

• 24 hour support.  I’m not sure about holidays, I’m having fun not working on PC’s.
• Quick hold queue processing.  I’ve never waited on hold for more than 5 minutes.
• Press 1 for support.  I love menu’s that get you where you need to go fast, instead of making you listen to 8 other options first.  I swear many OTHER companies do this to ‘discourage’ you from bothering.
• Friendly, helpful support that is more interested in ‘answering your question’ than getting personal information from you, typing poorly this information probably mistyping half of it, then asking you to repeat of spell stuff, essentially saving a good 5 minutes off a ’5 minute phone call’.

So, I’m amazed and impressed with EVGA as a company they simply rock!  In discussing with their support folks about needing to use a “Driver Cleaner’ to remove old drivers they asked how old my drivers were.  They stated that there used to be a driver remover for nVidia cards many, many moons ago, but that if the drivers were recent, they simply were not needed.

Additionally, a quick call to ATI support and I found the same thing.  Nope.  Don’t need them either.  So, why should you pay someone who represents neither manufacturer or the OEM’s who build the cards, to get software that may..or may not..work?

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One Response to “Driver Cleaners – New Snake Oil Products?”

1. candymancan says:

   September 26, 2009 at 00:02

   My opinions ? They worked in the past, but nowadays i dont think they are needed anymore. I just uninstall a driver from ATI and everything truely is gone even the folder in the main drive.. So i think driver cleaners are a thing of the past