System and security: Avast Antivirus warning that drivers are outdated. Should we update them?
The quick scan feature of Avast Antivirus Free not only scans the important parts of the computer for malware, but also identifies other issues. One of the tasks that Avast does, is checking the date of the drivers installed, and if there are updates available for them.
The screenshot below shows (a part of) what Avast Antivirus Free found out about the drivers on my Windows 10 laptop.
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If Avast Antivirus says that there are outdated drivers, does that mean that we have to do a driver update? And, because only Avast seems to have noticed the outdated drivers, should we perhaps buy the professional edition of the antivirus (the free version does not include the driver update feature) to do it for us? The answer is: No! And, as a general guideline: Never allow a third-party driver updater to update anything!
Using some third-party software to play around with your drivers is always dangerous and is a risk to create a mess. And then, have a look at the screenshot and the release dates of the drivers found by Avast. Two of them are said having been released in 2006! And another one in 1968!??
If you are running the full version of Avast Antivirus, I suggest to turn the driver update feature off. If you use the free version, just ignore the warning.
To be complete, here a recommendation on how to update your drivers (cf. post by "britechguy" at Bleeping Computer):
- Use the "service station" or "support assistant" of your computer vendor (DELL, in the case of my laptop), or download the drivers from your computer vendor's website.
- Some specific hardware drivers (as, for example, NVIDIA graphics cards) are shipped with an update utility, that you can use to update this specific driver. Also, if you know the specifications of a given piece of hardware and its OEM, you can download the driver from the OEM's website.
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