windowscentral[.]com/how-properly-update-device-drivers-windows-10#page1
That Windows Central article does a nice job explaining the basics for most cases. For graphics drivers, your current drivers may alert you when an update is available, &/or sites like Neowin[.]net have an article when new Intel, Nvidia, or AMD drivers are released. Intel has their own app that checks for any applicable driver updates, which is cool if you don't want to try and decipher if a new driver actually applies to your CPU, but it runs every time Windows starts. Corsair, Logitech, & Razor software alerts you to updates -- I'm sure there's Many more that do so too. You can try to get component model numbers in Device Mgr., or using apps like Hardware Info, and then just search for that component manufacturer's site, then search the site for drivers. You can also try to get the numbers off the chips themselves and search. Bear in mind that whatever device or component is listed in Windows Device Mgr. etc., that info ONLY reflects the driver that's installed, so may or may not be accurate -- it's unfortunately easy to have the wrong driver installed.
neowin[.]net/news/hwinfo-642
Drivers load with Windows, so Windows can talk to your hardware and, well, run. That's makes them a huge target for malware, and installing a bad driver is a great way to trash Windows so it won't run. Sadly there's no great way to remove a driver if you manage to get into Safe Mode, and sometimes a bad driver won't even let you get that far, so please backup before adding/updating drivers. When a driver is updated/replaced, Windows usually stores the old configuration, and gives you a boot menu option to restore last known good. That may work. All the drivers that are installed are stored in c:\ Windows\ System32\ DriverStore\ FileRepository\, but the folders have cryptic names, the files can only be copied while logged into that copy of Windows, and the setup files to install the drivers are often missing. Still, those drivers can be a big help if you have to reinstall Windows, or if/when Windows installs the wrong driver for a component, which does happen. You can simply copy & paste all of them, or you can use PowerShell to copy them for you.
docs.microsoft[.]com/en-us/powershell/module/dism/export-windowsdriver?view=win10-ps
No company spends the cash to write new or updated drivers without a reason. Few if any companies list every single change they make with a new driver version -- a change can be as simple as the coder noticing an error someone made and fixing it, which probably wouldn't be reported. Likewise the coder(s) working on a new version can make errors, so it really pays to research a new driver version as possible to find out if it's junk.
From the comments for today's GOTD, Dumo 2.23.2...
Microsoft will provide some drivers &/or updates via Windows Update, though those may or may not be the full driver package. Win10 may show optional updates on Windows Update, which are drivers Microsoft detected that may or may not be of use -- their wording is something like if you're having trouble these may help. Some component manufacturers provide reference drivers for download, but Microsoft discouraged this, wanting all updates in their database, so many, i.e. Realtek, stopped. Since some components are used by many manufacturers, sometimes drivers for one brand & model laptop, motherboard etc. will work on others. Some driver update software & web sites offer these *maybe* equivalents. Dumo frees you from having to check manufacturers sites for updates yourself. It doesn't distribute updates, which is cool -- you really shouldn't download drivers from anyone but the manufacturer, because the odds of malware are too high. It doesn't try to offer equivalent updates, which you really shouldn't try unless you've got a full backup handy that you can restore no matter what, and are also willing to do a lot of testing afterward, since those drivers may depend on something your PC or laptop simply does not have.
"Glary Utilities free makes the best usable drive backup before changing anything, and also checks for the need to update... says "all ok" almost all the time, and that's probably appropriate, since most systems work just fine without the need to update, considering that updates are usually available simply because there's new hardware out there..."
Politely disagree... Driver backups *may* be fine -- Windows itself often stores the last known good driver when you update a driver, and that's accessible via the boot menu -- but if a driver breaks Windows so it won't start, driver backups are useless. Consider a disk/partition image backup instead. RE: drivers being updated to just include new models, sometimes that's true, which research should reveal. But very often they include fixes, even when the focus is on new models, because the company didn't want to spend the $ on a driver update just for those fixes.
"Computer vendor's site: HP, Dell, Lenovo, and so on have their own suite of drivers for each serial number computer, go get them and save them for reinstall when needed, such as when reinstalling Windows 7 every year."
Those manufacturers will only provide updates for roughly a year -- updates will continue to be released by the component manufacturer, e.g. Intel, but those companies won't spend the $ to evaluate them against their now old hardware. Worse, to prevent customers from potentially causing problems, these companies also try to add locks, so newer drivers without the company's blessing cannot be installed. This was/is enough of a problem that Intel started making it possible to override such locks.
Reinstalling Win7 yearly? I have copies that date to its release, and now live on as VMs -- still running just fine.