Computer Act!ve - UK (2022-04-27)

Issue 630 • 27 April – 10 May 2022 39

STEP

7

If you have trouble viewing SDIO’s white text on a

blue background, you can customise its appearance to

make the information easier to read. Click the Theme

dropdown menu on the left^1 and choose a different theme to

apply – here we’ve chosen Coax, which gives the program a

more traditional look. SDIO offers an ‘Expert mode’^2 , which

lets you filter results to show only new, current or not-installed

drivers, but this isn’t essential. More useful are the options to

back up selected drivers by choosing ‘Extract to’^3 and to view a

log of your drivers from an earlier date by selecting ‘Load

snapshot’^4.

STEP

6

Once SDIO has installed a driver, it will highlight the
relevant entry in green to confirm that installation was
successful^1. It will also show you which driver it’s
currently installing^2 and confirm that a restore point was
created beforehand. Entries highlighted in orange require
you to restart your PC^3 , but wait until all your drivers are
installed before doing so. Now you know how the program
works, you can download additional driver packs so you can
install drivers in future when offline. Select ‘Click here to start
the download’^4 , choose the driver packs you want to save then
click OK.

STEP

5

SDIO will show you the progress of your download

in a green bar at the top of the window^1. Depending

on how many drivers you selected, this may take a

while. If it’s taking too long, click the ‘Click here to select

updates’ link to see the file size, your download speed and the

estimated time remaining, as well as the number of connections

(seeds) to other sources that are sharing the drivers (peers). To

speed things up, you can deselect specific drivers in the list of

‘Driver packs’^2 or click Cancel^3 to abandon the process

altogether. Once the driver packs are downloaded, SDIO will

start installing them.

STEP

4

Select all the drivers you want to update or replace by
ticking the boxes next to them^1. Clicking the double-
arrow icon next to an entry will show you other
versions of that driver, but the one at the top of the list is the
version you need. Alternatively, click ‘Select all’^2 in the list of
options on the left-hand side to tick all the required boxes.
You should also tick the box next to ‘System restore points are
disabled’^3 to enable the option and create a system restore
point before you install new drivers, so you can roll back if
anything goes wrong. Finally, click the Install option^4 – or
press Ctrl+I – and SDIO will download your selected drivers.

Next issue: Add tabs to File Explorer in Windows 10 and 11

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