Hi holdum,
As a rule of thumb most of us (not all) do not like using these programs, and they tend to write stuff to the Registry that cannot easily be removed should their driver replacement fail.
This often means a complete Windows Reinstallation from factory recovery disks or partition or a Windows Reset. Both of these of course are destructive operations, and extreme care must be taken to
backup ALL customer personal data to external media before even thinking about trying to use one of these programs. You, kemical, and I are well aware of this and often use Image Cloning programs in case there is a catastrophic failure after the driver repair is done by the program.
There are a few good programs that do this, but even so, I don't personally trust them. I am not specifically familiar with this program so I can't give it a good rating from personal experience, so therefore I wouldn't recommend it's use for a novice user here on our forum. I
NEVER recommend programs to forum users unless I personally have tested them out on my own computers or on Client computers. One other thing we've noticed on the other tech forums I volunteer on is that many of these programs (not necessarily SlimDrivers) include nasty spyware with both their free and even their paid versions of software. One good example is
IOBit Advanced System Care. This fact alone would cause me to not recommend it for forum users who are looking for an easy fix to their driver-related problem.
The fact that you've had good luck with it is good for you, but not necessarily a novice user due to the fact that they often don't understand the need for a backup to external media, image cloning, etc. and because they are panicky trying to fix their problem, they resort to using an automatic program that can introduce more problems to their Windows system than they ever imagined.
IMO, the OP here is better off taking their computer to a licensed computer Tech and spending
$35-$75 U.S. to get this problem professional repaired, than scrambling their Windows and having to pay twice that for a Windows reset or a Spyware Virus removal or both. Not to mention, that if they fail to execute a proper backup they could easily lose some or all of their data from that hard drive. As discussed in other threads recently, this can cost them up to
$500 or more to recover from.
All because the OP in question was trying to save less than a $100 trip to the computer repair shop; now they could have lost their personal data completely at a cost of $$$??
Just my thoughts of course.
Thanks for suggesting it nonetheless. If the OP does have their data properly backed up, and is aware of the risk and they
CAN'T afford a repair shop visit, they just want their computer working again right away for zero cost, your method may be a way for them to go.
Cheers!
<<<BBJ>>>