Snappy Driver Installer

If something goes wrong, you can go back to the latest restore point.
If installed driver doesn't work properly, you try installing another from dropdown lists. It would be nice if you let me know when you have to pick
the second/third best match, so that I could see if can do something to improve driver ranking.

SDI creates log files in the folder named "logs". You should be able to find the relevant log file, granted that you recall when it happened.
 
LifelineIT said:
My real question is, if I just keep the torrent seeded, am I automatically going to get updates?
Click to expand...
Each time you run SDI, it downloads http://driveroff.net/SDI_Update.torrent and checks for new binaries/driverpacks. SDI can download them with an internal torrent client but it stops seeding as soon as it's done downloading.

If you want to help other people download faster, you can seed the current torrent via uTorrent or any other client. There's no point in seeding old torrent once new is uploaded at http://driveroff.net/SDI_Update.torrent. In order to populate new torrent, seeders are given the following instruction:

Method 1(simple)
  1. Delete the old .torrent + Data.
  2. Download the updated torrent and start downloading.
  3. ????
  4. PROFIT!!!

Method 2(advanced)
  1. Delete the old .torrent while keeping Data.
  2. Download the updated torrent.
  3. Uncheck “Start downloading” or stop it if it’s already started.
  4. Right click on the torrent in your torrent client and choose “Force re-check”.
  5. Start downloading.
  6. Clear readonly attribute on files in the Drivers folder.
  7. Run del_old_driverpacks.bat.
 
BadPointer said:
Right click on the torrent in your torrent client and choose “Force re-check”.
Click to expand...
In Transmission, there is no explicit 'Force recheck' option.
4. Right-click and select 'Verify Local Data'. When the check is complete:
5. Right-click again and select 'Start Now'.
 
Thanks. In this particular case system restore wasn't an option, and no big deal. The system has since been reimaged but it was a Dell Inspiron 7450, I suspect it was the USB3x drivers in particular that caused the issue.
 
cbsnyder87 said:
Is there ever a need to unpack the compressed drivers, or does SDI do this itself?
Click to expand...
I'm sure you can unpack the individual drivers if you want, but no. SDI performs the entire operation, inc unpacking, itself.

With respect, have you actually tried SDI ?
 
I used it yesterday. Customer brought in a partially functioning laptop. I went to device manager and noticed some devices missing drivers. I immediately plugged in SDI, it picked the missing drivers and installed them. It was all over in about 5 minutes. Almost magical to watch. The sad part was I don't think the customer understood the significance of what just happened.
 
bertie40 said:
I'm sure you can unpack the individual drivers if you want, but no. SDI performs the entire operation, inc unpacking, itself.

With respect, have you actually tried SDI ?
Click to expand...


I had just used it on my own machine right before writing my question. It functioned flawlessly...but I was baffled because I've never seen a program run off of compressed files. So my first inclination was, "Wait a minute. I was connected to the internet. Did this thing just download the drivers and install them, or did it unpack the files already in the folder?" My next question was, "What if I am not connected to the internet when I use SDI? Would I need to unpack all of these files to be used in that case?"

So, rather than unpacking 8 Gigs of data...which after 25 minutes was only at 6% and 27 Gigs, I decided to just ask somebody.
 
SDI doesn't download drivers from the Internet. It downloads driverpacks. Once you have driverpacks, you don't need the Internet.

Each driver is installed in two steps:
Stage 1: Extracting. You can see the progressbar going from 0% to 90%.
Stage 2: Installing. It might appear installation stuck on 90% but the driver is being installed. There's just no way to tell how much it progressed and it just jumps from 90% to 100% as soon as driver installed.

cbsnyder87 said:
I was baffled because I've never seen a program run off of compressed files.
Click to expand...
Actually a lot of programs work with compressed data. For example videogames often have their resources packed. However sometimes it's faster to read uncompressed data than to read compressed data and unpack it the fly. It depends on the hardware so it's difficult to optimize for every possible case. Most PCs at my workplace are somewhat old(Pentium 4, Radeon x1600, 1 GB RAM, 120 GB) so I have a great opportunity to optimize SDI for worst cases. SDI works even on Windows 2000 even though it takes an additional effort to keep support for this OS. Thankfully I don't have to deal with PCs with 256MB RAM anymore because they tended to run out of virtual memory during extracting.

Driverpacks are optimized for minimal size. It resulted in the loss of random access to the files, so SDI has to treat them like magnetic tapes. In order to reach a file at the end of archive, it has to extract all files preceding it and discard unwanted files without writing on disk. SDI is intelligent enough to extract all needed files in a single pass. This is why SDI sometimes skips the first state(extracting) for some drivers.
The point is you don't have to worry about it, SDI does all the heavy lifting in the most efficient way possible.
 
BadPointer said:
SDI doesn't download drivers from the Internet. It downloads driverpacks. Once you have driverpacks, you don't need the Internet.

Each driver is installed in two steps:
Stage 1: Extracting. You can see the progressbar going from 0% to 90%.
Stage 2: Installing. It might appear installation stuck on 90% but the driver is being installed. There's just no way to tell how much it progressed and it just jumps from 90% to 100% as soon as driver installed.


Actually a lot of programs work with compressed data. For example videogames often have their resources packed. However sometimes it's faster to read uncompressed data than to read compressed data and unpack it the fly. It depends on the hardware so it's difficult to optimize for every possible case. Most PCs at my workplace are somewhat old(Pentium 4, Radeon x1600, 1 GB RAM, 120 GB) so I have a great opportunity to optimize SDI for worst cases. SDI works even on Windows 2000 even though it takes an additional effort to keep support for this OS. Thankfully I don't have to deal with PCs with 256MB RAM anymore because they tended to run out of virtual memory during extracting.

Driverpacks are optimized for minimal size. It resulted in the loss of random access to the files, so SDI has to treat them like magnetic tapes. In order to reach a file at the end of archive, it has to extract all files preceding it and discard unwanted files without writing on disk. SDI is intelligent enough to extract all needed files in a single pass. This is why SDI sometimes skips the first state(extracting) for some drivers.
The point is you don't have to worry about it, SDI does all the heavy lifting in the most efficient way possible.
Click to expand...


This might be nearly the most awesome tech tool I've ever seen, seconded only to Sysinternal's suite of tools.

(I had no idea video games unpacked compressed files on the fly. Can you tell I'm not a programmer? lol)
 
I think my ISP may be blocking Torrent downloads. I've tried Bit Torrent , U Torrent and Vuze with no luck. None are able to start the download. I tried just getting the indexes from the program download and that didn't work either. Are the indexes and driver packs available as a regular download ?
 
nlinecomputers said:
Note the above. You'll need to forward that port in your router to get it to work.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the reply :)

" Setup the port on my firewall and now it is updating. "

I had tried disabling my firewall and it still didn't work. I don't have access to the router I use now.

I'm on a community system.
 
These are the very driverpacks that are available via the torrent. You just need to drop them into the "drivers" folder and let SDI rebuild indexes.
 
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