SnailDriver, super fast driver updater

Yeah yeah, I know that is a general belief that these driver updaters are garbage and that they always break stuff. Well, sometimes you have an unrecognized device listed and you can’t figure out which one it is. For such situations, these tools are excellent. Or you’re just one of those freaks like me who just wants all drivers fully updated.

I’ve posted Iobit Driver Booster in the past, but I think this one is even better, easier to use and with less clutter in the interface. Found it today by pure coincidence while I was browsing for some other tools.

It’s called SnailDriver and it’s a small, but very fast and minimalistic driver updater.

I’ve tested it on 3 systems, 1x AMD based and 2x Intel based and it worked pretty damn well. Updated all drivers super fast and with ease and while there were minor issues with the app, they weren’t show stopping problems. It’s a new app, it’ll get fixed soon for sure.

Few minor issues:

• Intel SST Audio Device driver causes audio device on Windows tablets (HP X2, ACER Iconia W4) inoperable. Had to rollback the driver manually (not an issue with SnailDriver as I’ve experienced it before).
• System Restore points don’t get created reliably despite this setting being enabled in SnailDriver. I recommend making it manually just to be sure.
• Sometimes you have to repeat scans to find new drivers that require updating. Not a huge issue, but should be checked.

Give it a try, it’s pretty good and can come in handy quite often 🙂

Official webpage:

http://snailsuite.com

Installing old Lexmark printer drivers on latest Windows

There is a bit of an issue with Lexmark and existing (older) printers because Lexmark left the consumer market of ink-jet printers and is thus not providing new drivers anymore. Which means you have to use Windows 7 or Windows 8 drivers on newer versions of Windows like latest Windows 10 Anniversary (Redstone). Trying to install it normal way just won’t work, so you have to do several additional steps to make it work.

First, download the latest Lexmark drivers for your device:

http://support.lexmark.com/drivers

Right-click on the downloaded installer and select Properties. Go to Compatibility tab and select Run this program in compatibility mode and select same Windows version as the driver was designed for. In my case, it was Windows 8 for my rather old Lexmark X3650.

In the past, it used to work even without this step, but with Windows 10 Redstone, this isn’t the case anymore. At least for me that is…

Temporarily disable Windows driver signing check

This step is critical, otherwise the installation of driver will fail since it is not designed for the latest Windows.

To do this, follow these steps:

• Hold Shift key and click Restart button that you’d otherwise use to simply restart the computer (holding Shift key will open a special recovery menu).
• Select Troubleshoot
• Select Advanced options
• Select Startup Settings
• Click Restart
• Press F7 key on keyboard to select Disable driver signature enforcement

System will restart and start in a mode with driver signature check disabled just for this session. After you restart the system again, this feature will automatically turn itself back on again!

Installing the driver

Firstly, make sure you don’t have printer connected with USB cable to your PC. Yes, this is not a typo. Lexmark requires driver installation prior physical connection, otherwise you’ll experience problems.

After you have disabled Driver signature enforcement and made sure it’s not connected to PC with USB cable, you can start the installer with compatibility mode already applied to it (as shown above). Follow the instructions of the installer.

It is possible there will be an error message during driver installation, but you can just dismiss it, it’ll still work just fine.

You may also get popup like this (example from Windows 8.x):

Don’t worry, this is normal since we have disabled driver signature enforcement. Confirm the installation of the driver. If you do not do this, printer won’t work!

When driver installation is complete, Lexmark driver installer will ask you to connect printer with USB cable to your PC. Do so and wait for a moment for it to recognize it.

Setting printer as default device

It is possible that driver won’t set your newly installed Lexmark printer as your default printing device.

Go to Start and then Settings. Select Devices button, select the Lexmark printer and click Manage button. Select Set as default. That’s it.

Finishing installation

We’ve finished everything already, just make sure to restart your system in order to re-activate Driver Signature Enforcement feature. It is really not recommended to run system this way other than for such specific tasks as installation of trusted but old driver.

Final word

I have an old Lexmark X3650 that I use for making copies and printing using just black cartridge, because I just don’t need color printing. And I was this close of throwing the damn thing through the window because it kept on failing to install the driver, but then I gave it one more try and then I figured it out with the compatibility step. Would be a shame since it’s scanning stuff really nicely, printing stuff nicely as well and I’m using its card reader as general purpose SD card reader. So, despite the age, it’s actually a really nice device with quite cheap cartridges. It would really be a shame throwing it away. So, I’m kinda happy that I’m this determined for certain things and I got it working again. I hope this guide will help you get your Lexmark printer working again even on latest Windows. 🙂

Catalyst Control Center not starting

Have you just installed AMD Catalyst Control Center and when you want to open it, mouse changes to “in progress” indicator and then nothing happens? If you check the Event Viewer, KERNELBASE.DLL and CLI.exe errors for AMD stuff, it’s not .NET Framework issue at all. I thought this first as well, but after checking if I have latest version and verifying system integrity (I just made a WIn8.1 system Refresh to clean it up) with sfc /scannow and all was well. Catalyst drivers out of the blue on a perfectly clean system decided to go haywire. Tried reinstalling them several times, deleting them by hand in Device Manager, nothing.

Solution? Only way to do it was to use AMD Driver Cleaner located here:

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/AMD-Clean-Uninstall-Utility.aspx

Uninstalled the drivers with the above tool, re-downloaded latest WHQL drivers and after that, Catalyst Control Center was working fine again. Just another day in systems hell…