Any · Maintenance

Check for driver updates (in the right order)

Stale or wrong drivers cause crashes, audio glitches, and odd lag. Update the GPU first — it's the one that matters most.

Before you start

Medium risk. This change is reversible — you can return to the previous state without professional help or data loss.

Newer isn't automatically better. If the machine is stable, leave the driver alone — GPU releases routinely fix one thing and break another.
NVIDIA offers Game Ready and Studio drivers. Studio is the steadier choice unless you're chasing performance on a game that launched this week.
After a big Windows feature update, check your GPU driver version again. Windows sometimes reinstalls its own older copy over yours, and the glitch you fixed comes back.
Set a restore point before chipset drivers. They touch storage and power management, which is the category most likely to leave you unable to boot.

GPU: use the maker's tool (NVIDIA GeForce Experience / AMD Adrenalin / Intel DSA) — not Windows Update for this
Chipset + audio + network: the laptop/motherboard maker's support page is the only safe source
Avoid third-party 'driver updaters' — they're mostly adware

Crashes, audio glitches and odd lag stop after the GPU + chipset updates, and Device Manager shows no yellow warnings.

Problems continue or new glitches appear — roll back the most recent driver update on the affected device.

Next stop: the related fixes below, or start a guided diagnosis.