How to update sound drivers in no time
Even if you have no problems with your sound, it's important to keep your sound drivers up to date. After all, it's always better to prevent computer issues rather than madly try and fix them when they arise. A sound driver is what allows your sound card to communicate with your PC and makes it work.
Manufacturers of sound cards will update driver software at their end as and when they see fit, usually to provide better features, enhanced quality, or to fix any glitches. If you miss one of these updates (or more) it could cause any of the following issues:
- Crackling - the sound quality isn't as it should be and could make watching movies or playing games frustrating, to say the least
- No sound - definitely not what you're aiming for and can impact a wide range of activities and tasks while using your computer
- Missing features - not quite as detrimental as the first two problems but it could mean you miss out on new sound effects or control over your speakers etc.
The good news is, it can be a cinch to update your sound driver, and actually you can update all of them in one go. We have a powerful driver updater tool that will search for any outdated device drivers and update them all at once (this includes everything from graphics to keyboards). It's part of our CCleaner Professional package and we'll explain it more in detail at the end, including some of the other benefits it brings.
If you want to see how you can manually update just your sound driver, we'll run through that first.
How to update sound drivers manually
To manually check for a sound driver update in Windows 10, follow these steps:
- Go to the "Start" menu and type in "Device Manager".
- Select "Device Manager" then look for "Sound, video and game controllers". Expand this category and you should see options appear below this category.
- Right-click on your sound card and then click "Properties".
- Under the "Driver" tab click on "Update Driver".
- Choose "Search automatically for updated driver software".
- If Windows 10 can find a newer version follow the instructions to install it.
If that seems like a lot of steps, it is...compared to an automatic tool that only requires a few clicks of a button. What's more, if Windows 10 can't find an update then you would need to go to the sound card manufacturer's website and compare your version to their latest release. If yours is different then you would have to follow their instructions and download and install the correct version.
Don't worry, we're going to let you know how to do it the easy way. After all, we don't all need to be tech gurus, and fiddling around with the backend of PCs is particularly time consuming if you're not used to it.
How to update sound drivers in moments
If you want to update all of your drivers in the same place and with minimal effort, this is for you. We came up with the CCleaner Driver Updater to hunt down any outdated drivers you may have and install the latest versions. It comes with more than 25 million drivers on its database so is very thorough at its job!
Not only that but it comes as part of our CCleaner Professional package that also does the following (among other things):
- Analyzes, tunes, and fixes your PC
- Removes tracking files and browsing data
- Cleans places you can't find to give you back valuable space
- Keeps software up to date
These individual tools are mighty powerful but together they will really help to keep your PC running at its optimum, which could improve speed and performance. You can try CCleaner for free for 14 days so that you can see for yourself how it helps. Simply download it and start using it. You don't even need to enter your card details. We think you'll love it. We've already had 2.5 billion (2,500,000,000) downloads across the world, so it's improving people's lives and computers everywhere.