Download and install drivers in Windows 8.1

Windows comes with drivers for many devices, such as printers, displays, keyboards, and TVs. A driver is software that a device uses to work with your PC. Every device needs a driver to work with your PC. So, in many cases, you can plug in a device, and it’ll work automatically.

Windows can also download device software and info. This might include an app that the device manufacturer created to go with your device or info like the product name, manufacturer, and model number, to help you distinguish between similar devices.

Drivers are updated occasionally. Windows can update them automatically, or you can install the updated drivers yourself. It’s important for you to have confidence in the updated drivers you install. Windows notifies you if it detects a suspicious or unsafe driver you shouldn’t install.

Windows Update checks for updated drivers and software for your devices and install them automatically. Keeping Windows Update on is a good way to make sure your devices continues to work properly and you get the best experience with them.

Note: PCs running Windows RT 8.1 always automatically download and install drivers, apps, and info for your devices.

To check that automatic updating is on

Swipe in from the right edge of the screen, tap Settings, and then tap Change PC settings. (If you’re using a mouse, point to the lower-right corner of the screen, move the mouse pointer up, click Settings, and then click Change PC settings.)

Tap or click Update and recovery, and then tap or click Windows Update.

Tap or click Choose how updates get installed.

Under Important updates, choose Install updates automatically (recommended).

If your device came with a disc, it might contain software that installs a driver. Before you install a driver from a disc, check the info that comes with it to be sure it supports your current version of Windows.

You can also search for new drivers on the manufacturer’s website. Driver updates are often available in the support section of their website. Download the latest driver for your device, and follow the installation instructions on the website. You can usually double-tap or double-click the downloaded file to install the driver on your PC.

If the driver you got from a disc or downloaded from a website doesn’t install itself, you might need to install manually.

To manually install a driver

You must be signed in as an administrator to follow these steps.

Swipe in from the right edge of the screen, and then tap Search. (If you’re using a mouse, point to the lower-right corner of the screen, move the mouse pointer up, and then click Search.)

Enter Device Manager in the search box, and tap or click Device Manager.

In the list of hardware categories, double-tap or double-click the category your device is in and then double-tap or double-click the device you want. For example, to see your video card, tap or click Display adapters, and then double-tap or double-click the video card name.

Tap or click the Driver tab, tap or click Update Driver, and then follow the instructions. You might be asked for an admin password or to confirm your choice.

Occasionally, you might see a notification that a driver is unsigned, has been changed since it was signed, or can’t be installed by Windows. We recommend that you don’t install unsigned or changed drivers.

A digitally signed driver includes a digital signature, which is an electronic security mark that indicates the publisher of software and whether someone has tampered with it since it was signed. If a driver has been signed by a publisher that has verified its identity with a certification authority, you can be confident that the driver comes from that publisher and hasn’t been changed.

If you see any of the following notifications when you’re installing a driver, you should stop the installation and go to your device manufacturer’s website to get a digitally signed driver for your device.

Windows can’t verify the publisher of this driver software

The driver doesn’t have a digital signature or has been signed with a digital signature that wasn’t verified by a certification authority. You should only install this driver if you got it from the manufacturer’s disc or from your system administrator.

This driver hasn’t been signed

The driver hasn’t been digitally signed by a verified publisher. The driver might have been changed to include malware that could harm your PC or steal info. In rare cases, legitimate publishers do change drivers after they’ve been digitally signed, but you should only install an unsigned driver if you got it from a device manufacturer’s disc.

Unfortunately, there’s no trustworthy source of info that indicates who has published an unsigned driver. Anyone can change the contents of an unsigned driver, and there’s no way to know why it was changed. Most manufacturers now digitally sign the drivers they create before releasing them to the public.

Windows requires a digitally signed driver

A driver that lacks a valid digital signature, or has a signature that was changed after it was signed, can’t be installed on 64-bit versions of Windows. You’ll only see this notification if you have a 64-bit version of Windows and try to install such a driver on it.

Update drivers in Windows 10

Before you begin

Driver updates for Windows 10, along with many devices, such as network adapters, monitors, printers, and video cards, are automatically downloaded and installed through Windows Update. You probably already have the most recent drivers, but if you’d like to manually update or reinstall a driver, here’s how:

Update the device driver

In the search box on the taskbar, enter device manager, then select Device Manager.

Select a category to see names of devices, then right-click (or press and hold) the one you’d like to update.

Select Search automatically for updated driver software.

Select Update Driver.

If Windows doesn’t find a new driver, you can try looking for one on the device manufacturer’s website and follow their instructions.

Reinstall the device driver

In the search box on the taskbar, enter device manager, then select Device Manager.

Right-click (or press and hold) the name of the device, and select Uninstall.

Restart your PC.

Windows will attempt to reinstall the driver.

More help

If you can’t see the desktop and instead see a blue, black, or blank screen, see Troubleshoot blue screen errors or Troubleshoot black or blank screen errors.

Add Device Drivers to Windows During Windows Setup

To install Windows on some hardware designs, you may need to add device drivers to WindowsВ Setup. You can add drivers to Windows Setup by using an answer file that specifies the path to the driver files. To do this in new installations, you add the Microsoft-Windows-PnpCustomizationWinPE component during the windowsPE configuration pass, add the driver paths, and then specify the answer file.

You can also modify existing images and add and remove drivers. You can service offline images in several ways. For example, you can add the Microsoft-Windows-PnpCustomizationsNonWinPE component during the offlineServicing configuration pass, add or remove the driver paths, and then specify the name of the answer file. For more information about how to modify drivers on an offline Windows image by using an answer file, and also other methods of adding drivers to and removing drivers from an existing image, see Add and Remove Drivers to an Offline Windows Image.

Add Drivers to New Installations (windowsPE)

For new installations, you add drivers during the windowsPE configuration pass.

This method initializes Windows Preinstallation Environment (WindowsВ PE) and processes WindowsВ PE settings from the answer file, as follows:

Windows stages the Windows PE drivers in the RAM driver store.. Windows loads boot-critical drivers that WindowsВ PE requires to access the local disk and network. When you right-click DevicePaths and select Insert New PathAndCredentials into WindowsВ PE, Windows PE processes other WindowsВ PE customizations that the answer file specifies.

The WindowsВ Setup process applies the Windows image. Boot-critical drivers appear on the Windows image before Setup installs that image. Other drivers that you added to the WindowsВ PE driver store appear in the Windows image driver store. When Windows Setup processes the offlineServicing pass, Windows Setup also adds any drivers that the driver path specifies to the Windows image driver store.

To add a device driver during the windowsPE pass

Use Windows System Image Manager (WindowsВ SIM) to create an answer file that contains the paths to the device drivers that you intend to install.

Add the Microsoft-Windows-PnpCustomizationsWinPE component to your answer file in the windowsPE configuration pass.

Expand the Microsoft-Windows-PnpCustomizationsWinPE node in the answer file. Right-click DevicePaths, and then select Insert New PathAndCredentials.

A new PathAndCredentials list item appears.

For each location that you access, add a separate PathAndCredentials list item.

You can include multiple device driver paths by adding multiple PathAndCredentials list items. If you add multiple list items, you must increment the Key value for each path. For example, if you add two separate driver paths, the first path uses the Key value of 1 , and the second path uses the Key value of 2 .

Save the answer file, and then close WindowsВ SIM. The answer file must resemble the following example:

Boot to WindowsВ PE.

At a command prompt, run WindowsВ Setup. Specify the name of the answer file. For example:

Windows Setup adds the device drivers in the \\server\share\drivers path to the system during the setup process.

For more information about drivers, see Device Drivers and Deployment Overview and Add a Driver Online in Audit Mode. For more information about Windows components, see Unattended Windows Setup Reference.

Download the Windows Driver Kit (WDK)

The WDK is used to develop, test, and deploy Windows drivers.

Runtime requirements

You can run the Windows 10, version 2004 WDK on Windows 7 and later, and use it to develop drivers for these operating systems:

Client OS	Server OS
Windows 10	Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2016
Windows 8.1	Windows Server 2012 R2
Windows 8	Windows Server 2012
Windows 7	Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1

WDK for Windows 10, version 2004

Step 1: Install Visual Studio 2019

The WDK requires Visual Studio. For more information about system requirements for Visual Studio, see Visual Studio 2019 System Requirements.

The following editions of Visual Studio 2019 support driver development for this release:

When you install Visual Studio 2019, select the Desktop development with C++ workload. The Windows 10 Software Development Kit (SDK) is automatically included, and is displayed in the right-hand Summary pane. Note that the version of the SDK that is compatible with the WDK for Windows 10, version 2004 may not be the default SDK. To select the correct SDK:

In Visual Studio Installer, on the Individual components tab, search for Windows 10 SDK (10.0.19041.0), select this version and continue with install. Note that Visual Studio will automatically install Windows 10 SDK (10.0.19041.1) on your machine.

If you already have Visual Studio 2019 installed, you can install the Windows 10 SDK (10.0.19041.1) by using the Modify button in Visual Studio install.

WDK has Spectre mitigation enabled by default but requires spectre mitigated libraries to be installed with Visual Studio for each architecture you are developing for. Additionally, developing drivers for ARM/ARM64 require the build tools for these architectures to also be installed with Visual Studio. To locate these items you will need to know the latest version of MSVC installed on your system.

To find the latest version of MSVC installed on your system, in Visual Studio Installer go to workload page, on the right pane under installation details, expand Desktop development with C++ and locate the MSVC v142 — VS 2019 C++ x64/x86 build tools (V14.xx) — note where xx should be the highest version available.

With this information (v14.xx), go to Individual components and search for v14.xx. This will return the tool sets for all architectures, including Spectre mitigated libs. Select the driver architecture you are developing for.

For example, searching for v14.25 returns the following:

Step 1.5 Install Refreshed Windows SDK 10.0.19041.685 for Windows 10, version 2004

This SDK is strongly recommended and will eventually be made available through Visual Studio

Step 2: Install Refreshed WDK for Windows 10, version 2004

The WDK Visual Studio extension is included in the default WDK installation.

If you can’t find driver project templates in Visual Studio, the WDK Visual Studio extension didn’t install properly. To resolve this, run the WDK.vsix file from this location: C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Vsix\VS2019\WDK.vsix.

Enterprise WDK (EWDK) for Windows 10, version 2004

The EWDK is a standalone, self-contained command-line environment for building drivers. It includes the Visual Studio Build Tools, the SDK, and the WDK. The latest public version of the EWDK contains Visual Studio 2019 Build Tools 16.7.0 and MSVC toolset v14.23. To get started, mount the ISO and run LaunchBuildEnv.

The EWDK also requires the .NET Framework version 4.7.2. For more information about other requirements for the .NET Framework, see .NET Framework system requirements.

EWDK with Visual Studio Build Tools

You can use the Visual Studio interface with the build tools provided in the EWDK.

1. Mount the EWDK ISO.
2. Run LaunchBuildEnv.cmd .
3. In the environment created in step 2, type SetupVSEnv, and then press Enter.
4. Launch devenv.exe from the same environment, using the full file path. Example: «C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\\%Community|Professional|Enterprise%\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe»

Note that the Visual Studio major version should match with the version in the EWDK. For example, Visual Studio 2019 works with the EWDK that contain VS16.X build tools.

Driver samples for Windows 10

To download the driver samples, do one of the following:

• Go to the driver samples page on GitHub, click Clone or download, and then click Download ZIP.
• Download the GitHub Extension for Visual Studio, and then connect to the GitHub repositories.
• Browse the driver samples on the Microsoft Samples portal.