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.

Automatically get recommended drivers and updates for your hardware

Support for Windows 7 ended on January 14, 2020

We recommend you move to a Windows 10 PC to continue to receive security updates from Microsoft.

You can have Windows automatically download recommended drivers and detailed information for your hardware and devices. This is a good way to make sure all your hardware and devices work properly.

Drivers and information

Windows can find and download two kinds of updates for devices connected to your computer:

Drivers. A driver is software that allows your computer to communicate with hardware devices. Without drivers, the devices you connect to your computer—for example, a mouse or external hard drive—won’t work properly. Windows can automatically check if there are drivers available for new devices that you connect to your computer.

For hardware that you’ve connected to your computer in the past, updated drivers might become available at a later date; but those drivers aren’t installed automatically. To install these optional updates, go to Windows Update in Control Panel, check for updates, and then view and install driver updates that are available for your computer.

Information. Windows can download high-resolution icons for many hardware devices that you connect to your computer, along with detailed information about them, such as product name, manufacturer, and model number—even detailed information about the sync capabilities of a device. These details can make it easier for you to distinguish between similar devices that are connected to your computer, such as different mobile phones.

You can check Windows Update at any time to see if it found new drivers and icons for your hardware, especially if you recently installed a new device. If you want to have Windows Update automatically check for the latest drivers and icons, here’s how:

Open Devices and Printers by clicking the Start button , and then, on the Start menu, clicking Devices and Printers.

Right-click the name of your computer, and then click Device installation settings.

Click Yes, do this automatically (recommended), and then click Save changes. If you’re prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

If Yes is already selected, click Cancel to close the dialog box.

To get all important and recommended updates for your computer and your devices, make sure that Windows Update is turned on and configured properly.

Even if you have Windows Update set to automatically download and install all important and recommended updates, you still might not be getting all of the updated drivers available for your devices. For instance, optional updates might include updated drivers that become available for hardware or devices you’ve already installed. Windows doesn’t automatically download and install optional updates, but you will be notified when optional updates are available.

To get all the available updates for your devices, periodically check Windows Update for all available updates, including optional updates. You can review the available updates and then select them from the list of updates that Windows finds for your computer. Here’s how to do this:

Open Windows Update by clicking the Start button . In the search box, type Update, and then, in the list of results, click Windows Update.

In the left pane, click Check for updates, and then wait while Windows looks for the latest updates for your computer.

If there are any available updates, click the link in the box under Windows Update to see more information about each update. Each type of update might include drivers.

On the Select the updates you want to install page, look for updates for your hardware devices, select the check box for each driver that you want to install, and then click OK. There might not be any driver updates available.

On the Windows Update page, click Install updates. If you’re prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

Windows Update tells you if an update is important, recommended, or optional.

Some updates require you to restart your computer.

Windows Update will tell you if the updates were successfully installed.

Windows find installed drivers

Versions History

• Version 1.05:
  • Added ‘Open In RegEdit’ option, which opens the Registry key of the driver in RegEdit.
• Version 1.01:
  • Added secondary sorting support: You can now get a secondary sorting, by holding down the shift key while clicking the column header. Be aware that you only have to hold down the shift key when clicking the second/third/fourth column. To sort the first column you should not hold down the Shift key.
  • Fixed to display local date/time values according to daylight saving time settings.
• Version 1.00 — First release.

Start Using InstalledDriversList

After running it, the main window of InstalledDriversList displays the list of all drivers installed on your system. You can select one or more items (or select all items with Ctrl+A), and then copy them to the clipboard (Ctrl+C) and paste them into Excel or other spreadsheet application. You can also use the ‘Save Selected Items’ option (Ctrl+S) to export the selected items into csv/tab-delimited/xml/html file.

Meaning of green/yellow/red icons

• Green Icon — The driver is running on Windows kernel.
• Yellow Icon — The driver is not running on Windows kernel.
• Red Icon — The driver is not running on Windows kernel, but it should be loaded automatically when Windows starts. When you see a red icon, it’s possible that something is wrong with the driver. Be aware that on Windows 8, there are 2 drivers of the operating system that are normally displayed with red icon.

Command-Line Options

/stext	Save the installed drivers list into a regular text file.
/stab	Save the installed drivers list into a tab-delimited text file.
/scomma	Save the installed drivers list into a comma-delimited text file (csv).
/stabular	Save the installed drivers list into a tabular text file.
/shtml	Save the installed drivers list into HTML file (Horizontal).
/sverhtml	Save the installed drivers list into HTML file (Vertical).
/sxml	Save the installed drivers list into XML file.
/sort	This command-line option can be used with other save options for sorting by the desired column. If you don’t specify this option, the list is sorted according to the last sort that you made from the user interface. The parameter can specify the column index (0 for the first column, 1 for the second column, and so on) or the name of the column, like «Display Name» and «Driver Name». You can specify the ‘

‘ prefix character (e.g: «

Visit Time») if you want to sort in descending order. You can put multiple /sort in the command-line if you want to sort by multiple columns.

Free software to list installed Drivers on Windows 10

Device Drivers in Windows 10 make sure all the connected hardware work fine when used by the operating system. While Windows 10 offers Device Manager to locate and list all the device driver details, it’s too cumbersome and time taking. In this post, we have listed some free software to list installed Drivers on Windows 10/8/7.

Software to list installed Drivers on Windows 10

This list of software to list installed Drivers is entirely free so that you can choose any of them. I would suggest to read about each of them and use what works best for you.

1. ServiWin
2. DriverView
3. DriverStoreExplorer
4. NirSoft InstalledDriversList
5. PowerShell method
6. DevCon command-line tool
7. Driverquery command

If you need to do it often, make sure to save the list of drivers. In the future, if you need to find which driver has been updated or recently installed, it will be easy to find, especially the driver version number.

1] ServiWin

If you are looking for software which can not only make a list of all the drivers, but also quickly stop, start, restart, pause, and more, then ServiWin is what you need. The list of drivers can be saved as an HTML report of installed services/drivers in your default browser.

2] DriverView

DriverView is a free software from NirSoft, which displays a list of all device drivers available on Windows. You can view information like address of the driver, description, version, product name, company that created the driver, and more.

3] DriverStoreExplorer

This one tops our list of software because of its user interface, which is well done. Not only it lists the drivers on Windows 10, but it can also load drives from a folder that contains drives. The later is also called an offline driver store, which comes in handy to analyze drivers before they are installed.

Using this can add drivers to your offline store, and use it elsewhere. When it comes to exporting, it can export the list in CSV with grouping and sorting. While in the software, you can rearrange columns, so post exporting, you can view the columns you require first. You can download it from Github

4] NirSoft InstalledDriversList

Nirsoft has a lot of software for drivers, but this comes with much better features when it comes to exporting the list of drivers. You can export Driver Name, Display Name, Description, Startup Type, Driver type, Driver Group, Filename, Version, and more.

The icons next to the driver names tell you the status; you can open registry entries directly from here, and sort the list using secondary sorting support as well. You can download it from NirSoft

5] PowerShell method to get driver list

PowerShell is an incredible part of Windows, which comes with a lot of commands. One such command is Get-WindowsDriver. It can create a list of installed drivers for you. The details include Class Name, Boot Critical status, and more. You can use PowerShell to get the drivers list.

6] DevCon command-line tool

DevCon is a free command-line utility that not only can list drivers but also lets you manage them. You can get a brief list of all names, search for any hardware changes, find devices even if they are not currently online, and so on.

7] Driverquery command

Driverquery is an in-built command line, too, which list of drivers installed on the system. It will show the module name of the driver, along with the display name, driver type, and link date.

We hope this list offered you a lot of options to export a list of drivers installed on Windows 10 PC. Make sure to export the drivers it in a place where you don’t lose it. Most of the software are standalone tools.

Date: November 2, 2019 Tags: Drivers

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Ashish is a veteran Windows, and Xbox user who excels in writing tips, tricks, and features on it to improve your day to day experience with your devices.

How to get a list of all Device Drivers using Command Prompt

Device Drivers are one of the main reasons why your computer is running at the optimal performance today; they can also be one of the reasons why your computer is running slowly. When things are running well, computer users might want to view a list of the drivers that are operational. This can be a difficult process, which is why we are going to talk about how to view a list of all device drivers via the Command Prompt by using the driverquery command.

First we need to kick start the Command Prompt app, and for this to happen, users may open the WinX menu in Windows 10 or Windows 8.1 and click on Command Prompt. Another way of doing it is to press the Windows Key along with R, and then type CMD in the text box. Hit enter and watch as the Command Prompt launches.

Generate a list of Drivers using driverquery command

In the Command Prompt, enter the command driverquery . This should bring up a list of drivers installed on the system. Depending on the number of drivers installed, it may take a while for the screen to fully populate. A relatively fast computer should perform these tasks within just a few seconds after the user hits the enter button.

Using the driverquery command will show the module name of the driver, along with the display name, driver type, and link date. However, that is not all, because it is possible to generate more information about these drivers just by using a different parameter.

Type driverquery /v to generate the list similar to the one below:

To generate an even more detailed list, use driverquery /FO list /v .

It shows a lot more, including information on whether or not a driver is running. We understand that this one should be more adequate for advanced users, so we would recommend starting things off with driverquery /FO list /v instead of driverquery .

While using the Command Prompt removes the need for installing another app, some users might not feel right at home, so we suggest using an app called DriverView. It does almost everything driverquery does and more. It is a powerful app, and as such, we recommend it to novices since it is more straightforward than using the Command Prompt.

Date: July 30, 2018 Tags: CMD, Drivers

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Vamien McKalin possesses the awesome power of walking on water like a boss. He’s also a person who enjoys writing about technology, comics, video games, and anything related to the geek world.