Should i update all my drivers?

Hi folks,

I could use a little guidance. After a hellacious boot problem, too long a story to go into here, I recently ended up having to reformat my hard disk and reinstall windows. My laptop is a HP Pavilion purchased in late 2004. I reinstalled windows (xp home) and then used HP's provided application and driver recovery disk to rebuild the pre-installed programs.

So now I have a computer that is more or less brand-spankin'-new -- as of 2004. (I've done all the windows updates (~80 of them) too.)

The laptop comes with a preinstalled "HP Update" uility that periodically prompts you to check for updates to installed products, and the first time it ran, it basically provided a list of updated drivers for more or less every little piece of hardware in the box -- modem, touchpad, ethernet card, wireless card, 5-in-1 card reader... i can't even remember what-all else.

So my question is this: Is it advisable to go ahead and update all those drivers, or is it a better idea to leave well enough alone if everything is working ok?

I appreciate your help.
Thanks!

 

No go ahead and do updates, as they often offer new features, or make them less likely to crash under certian conditions. Even more so after a new windows install to ensure you have all the proper drivers to begin with.