Out-of-date drivers can cause plenty of problems with your PC, but few of us want to devote much time to keeping our drivers fresh. That's what makes an automated solution like the $30 Driver Reviver (free demo) especially useful.

Install Driver Reviver v3.1.6 and it will begin to scan your PC for outdated drivers automatically. It does so every time you boot up your PC, too, unless you tell it otherwise.

You can change these settings easily if the frequent scans are too much for you. The scans are quick, though, and the results easy to read at a glance. Driver Reviver displays a list of outdated drivers, with an icon that rates the age of your drivers from "Old" to "Very Old" to "Ancient."

Driver Reviver identified only one outdated driver on my Windows 7 PC. Free rival SlimDrivers identified six outdated drivers and $30 rival PerfectUpdater found 10. But you can't judge these products simply on the number of outdated drivers they find.

PerfectUpdater erroneously identified a current driver as outdated, and suggested another that was incompatible with my Windows 7 OS. Driver Reviver vendor ReviverSoft says that its database only includes drivers that have performed well, and which feature no known compatibility problems.

I had no problems with the drivers Driver Reviver recommended, and the update process is seamless, too. Reviver handles all of the heavy lifting for you, allowing you to download and install as many or as few of the recommended new drivers as you'd like.

The application automatically creates a system restore point for you, but does so in the background, so you're not alerted to this step. PerfectUpdater handles the installation process in nearly the same way, but SlimDrivers only lets you download and install one driver at a time.

The only hiccup I encountered while using Driver Reviver was when installing one recommended driver: the installation program repeatedly warned me that the files I was trying to install were already on my PC. The folks at ReviverSoft say this is due to the driver itself (which was likely installing new files to the same location as older files that have the same name), and is out of their control. I was able to successfully install the new driver by overwriting the original files.

Driver Reviver offers an easy solution to the problem of outdated drivers. It isn't the cheapest solution, and you'll save some money if you opt for the free SlimDrivers. But you'll save time by using Driver Reviver.

--Liane Cassavoy