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.

Hardware drivers category page Microsoft Download Center

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Roadmap for Device and Driver Installation

To install a device and driver in the WindowsВ operating system, follow these steps:

Step 1: Learn the fundamentals of device and driver installation in Windows.

You must understand the fundamentals of device and driver installation in the Windows family of operating systems. This will help you to make appropriate design decisions and will allow you to streamline your development process. For more information, see Overview of Device and Driver Installations.

Step 2: Learn about driver packages and their components.

A driver package consists of all the components that you must supply to install your device and support it under Windows.

To install a device or a driver, you must have system-supplied and vendor-supplied components. The system provides generic installation software for all device classes. Vendors must supply one or more device-specific components within the driver package.

For more information, see Driver Packages.

Step 3: Learn about information (INF) files.

An INF file contains the information and device settings which the system-provided device installation components use to install your driver package, such as the driver for the device and any device-specific applications.

For more information, see INF Files.

Step 4: Create a driver package for your device and drivers.

Your driver package must provide an INF file, the device’s driver files, as well as optionally provide additional software components. You may refer to the sample Toaster driver package to determine which components are needed for your driver package.

For more information about the components of a driver package, see Creating a Driver Package.

For more information about driver packages, see the Toaster Sample.

Step 5: Test-sign your driver package during development and testing.

Test-signing refers to using a test certificate to sign a prerelease version of a driver package for use on test computers. In particular, this allows developers to sign driver packages by using self-signed certificates, such as those the MakeCert tool generates. This capability allows developers to install and test driver packages in Windows with driver signature verification enabled.

Step 6: Release-sign your driver package for distribution.

After you have tested and verified your driver package, you should release-sign the driver package. Release-signing identifies the publisher of a driver package. While this step is optional, driver packages should be release-signed for the following reasons:

Ensure the authenticity, integrity, and reliability of driver packages. Windows uses digital signatures to verify the identity of the publisher and to verify that the driver has not been altered since it was published.

Provide the best user experience by facilitating automatic driver installation.

Run kernel-mode drivers on 64-bit versions of Windows Vista and later versions of Windows.

Playback certain types of next-generation premium content.

Driver packages are release-signed through either:

A WHQL Release Signature obtained through the Windows Hardware Compatibility Program (for Windows 10), or the Windows Hardware Certification Program (for Windows 8/8.1 and older operating systems).

A release signature created through a Software Publisher Certificate (SPC).

Step 7: Distribute your driver package.

The final step is to distribute the driver package. If your driver package meets the quality standards that are defined in the the Windows Hardware Compatibility Program (for Windows 10), or the Windows Hardware Certification Program (for Windows 8/8.1 and older operating systems), you can distribute it through Microsoft Windows Update program. For more information, see Publishing a driver to Windows Update.

These are the basic steps. Additional steps might be necessary based on the installation needs of your individual device and driver.

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.