"In general, it can be so tricky to find the ACTUAL graphics driver needed that unless I am having general problems, I try to update only when the manufacturer tells me to do so."
It can be a Huge hassle. If it's AMD hardware there are apparently several versions or variations possible with laptops, e.g. it's common for models with a discreet GPU to disable that GPU & use the CPU's GPU when running off the battery, but then when plugged in, they might use a setup similar to crossfire, where multiple graphics cards work together to render games. Finding the right mobile/laptop driver sets is hard, but, from the reports I've seen it can be anywhere from necessary to fix something to recommended for better performance. The same might or might not go for other brands of graphics hardware, like Intel CPUs with built-in GPUs, but I follow AMD/ATI news because that's the brand of cards we're running.
Companies like Acer very often don't see the need or benefit -- to them -- of testing newer versions of AMD reference drivers to ensure they work with products they used to sell. One, they'd have to rebrand & host the drivers for download, two, they'd have to support users updating those drivers, & three, it's common enough for users to just give up & buy new that it made it into a Sunday Dilbert comic strip.
"How do I see the event viewer?"
With the win10 TP I've gotten in the habit of going to Control Panel, either through the menu or using Windows Explorer, then selecting Administrative Tools.
"Running anything comparing registry between my two systems is a nightmare just thinking about it."
Regshot just shows changes, so if a dozen keys &/or files changed, that's all you see in its report. I agree that it's probably unlikely that game config is stored in the registry, but I have seen it happen, & if it's not stored in any of the common folders, maybe? Or you can just have it just watch folders rather than the registry. I've seen cases where it seemed the developers might have made a typo, & the folder name &/or location, or registry key &/or location, were nowhere near where I had expected. The downside is that making file/folder snapshots can take a while, especially if you've got 1100+ games, so I'd limit it to for example the Windows folder, then maybe try Users if that wasn't it etc.
Otherwise the way the registry is organized is pretty much identical in XP through 10 -- 64 bit Windows just adds a few WOW sub-sections it seems are mainly used by or for older software. [In fact, getting some pretty old software to work in 64 bit win7/8/8.1 involved taking the app's HKCU or HKLM Software keys & copying them to the corresponding WOW section.] User-related file/folder locations are almost identical from Vista <-> 10.
