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Is checking for unsigned drivers worth anything?

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I have two desktop computers and one laptop.
All three are running XP Home SP3.

One desktop (I will call this one Desktop 1) suffers from all kinds of strange errors, and a recent reinstall did not improve anything.

I found the following suggestion on ‘Kelly’s corner’:

When you receive error messages and are troubleshooting, use Sigverif.exe to check for unsigned drivers on your system.

So I did run sigverif.exe on C:\Windows\system32\drivers of Desktop 1, with the following result:

16 drivers were signed
386 drivers were unsigned.

The strange thing was that from the version information of most of these unsigned drivers I could tell that they originated from Microsoft XP SP3.

Subsequently I did the same check in Desktop 2 and the laptop.

The figures there were entirely different, with the vast majority signed.
Yet I could tell from filenames and version info that the drivers were the very same, and the same version/date!!

In order to rule out the (unlikely!) possibility that there were indeed differences in the copies of the drivers on the individual computers, I did the following:

I copied sigverif.exe and the content of C:\windows\system32\drivers, of Desktop 1, to a directory on a USB stick.

I then did three runs by subsequently plugging the stick into each of the three computers and running sigverif (on that stick) to check the drivers (also on that stick).
Since the same copy of sigverif was checking the very same drivers, the outcome of these three runs should obviously be identical.

However, they were not!!

The results were:
signed unsigned
Desktop 1 16 386
Desktop 2 332 70
Laptop 364 38

So the hardware/OS combination influences the outcome of what is supposed to be an objective check.

Which leads to the question: Is checking for unsigned drivers worth anything?

To anybody not believing the above: I have the logfiles to prove.

Topic

I don’t know about signed drivers

In reply to Is checking for unsigned drivers worth anything?

I’ve used many unsigned drivers without any harm. However, bad or poorly written drivers can cause all sorts of problems, regardless of whether they’re signed. Try using Hardware Manager to update the drivers on Desktop 1. If that doesn’t work, try going to each manufacturer’s web site and download the newest drivers for each piece of your hardware.

Please read my message again

In reply to I don’t know about signed drivers

Please read my message again.

I am sure that most of the drivers are:
– up to date
– signed
etc etc.

However, the computer on which the verification progran (sigverif.exe)is run
makes all the difference whether THE SAME driver, in THE SAME location, is listed as
safe or unsafe.

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