How to disable Automatic Driver Updates in Windows 10

While simply plugging in the device and letting Windows 10, Windows 8, or Windows 7 install the driver automatically is cool, you may for some reason prefer not to have the Driver installed automatically. You can if you wish, stop windows from installing the drivers automatically. You can stop automatic Driver updates in Windows 10/8/7. If you follow this tutorial, you can disable automatic driver installation for specific devices in Windows 10, using Control Panel, Windows Registry, or Group Policy Editor.

Disable Automatic Driver Updates

1] Using Control Panel

While it is recommended that you let make Windows download Drivers & Realistic Icons automatically if you wish, you can stop Windows 10/8 from automatically installing Drivers, open Control panel > Advanced System settings > Hardware tab > Device Installation settings.

You can also access it by opening Control Panel > Device & printers > Right-click the Computer under Devices and select Device Installation settings.

You will be asked, Do you want to download driver software and realistic icons for your devices?

Here select No, let me choose what to do. Click Save changes.

2] Using Group Policy Editor

Type gpedit.msc in start search and hit Enter to open Group Policy Editor.

Navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Device Installation > Device Installation.

Now in the RHS pane double click on Prevent Installation of Devices not described by other policy settings.

This policy setting allows you to prevent the installation of devices that are not specifically described by any other policy setting.

If you enable this policy setting, Windows is prevented from installing or updating the device driver for any device that is not described by either the “Allow installation of devices that match any of these device IDs”, the “Allow installation of devices for these device classes”, or the “Allow installation of devices that match any of these device instance IDs” policy setting.

If you disable or do not configure this policy setting, Windows is allowed to install or update the device driver for any device that is not described by the “Prevent installation of devices that match any of these device IDs”, “Prevent installation of devices for these device classes” policy setting, “Prevent installation of devices that match any of these device instance IDs”, or “Prevent installation of removable devices” policy setting.

Set it at Enabled. Click Apply / OK.

3] Using Windows Registry

If your Windows does not have Group Policy, you can navigate to the following key in Windows Registry:

Set the value of SearchOrderConfig to 0 to block driver updates. A value of 1 allows downloads of driver updates.

Restart your computer.

NOTE: These options don’t prevent the installation of those drivers whose device IDs, device instance IDs, and device classes are added in Group Policy for automatic installation. If you want to prevent the automatic updates of all the drivers, then you can check this post on how to Block Driver Updates via Windows Quality Update.

Stop automatic driver installation or reinstallation

If a Device Driver has already been installed and you want to remove it and then stop that particular driver from being update, do the following:

1. Uninstall the Driver via Devices Manager
2. Use the Show or Hide Updates Tool in Windows 10 to block the particular driver update.

How to Disable Automatic Driver Updates in Windows 10?

When you connect a new device to your computer, laptop or tablet, Windows tries to automatically install a corresponding driver. The operation system further tries to update the driver version through the Windows Update. In most cases, this approach is optimal, since guarantees the installation of the latest driver versions that have been verified by Microsoft. However, in some cases the user deliberately uses the old driver versions and doesn’t want them to be updated automatically by Windows through Window Update.

Fortunately, you can prevent Windows 10 from automatically updating device drivers. In this article we will describe several ways we know on how to disable driver auto-update.

How to Prevent Windows 10 from Automatically Updating Specific Drivers?

You can stop automatic driver updates for a specific device in Windows 10. For example, you are using some kind of old (but stable) video card driver that stops working correctly after each automatic driver update. You want all computer drivers to be updated automatically, except for the driver for a specific device (your video card).

Microsoft suggests using a separate tool – wushowhide.diagcab (“Show or Hide Updates”), which allows you to hide specific updates or drivers in Windows 10.

1. You can download the wushowhide.diagcab utility in the Microsoft Download Center (http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/2/2/f22d5fdb-59cd-4275-8c95-1be17bf70b21/wushowhide.diagcab);
2. Run the wushowhide.diagcab utility and select the option “Hide Updates“;
3. In the list of the available Windows updates and drivers, check the drivers for which you want to disable the auto update and click Next button;
4. After that, the selected drivers will not be updated manually by Windows.

You can disable specific driver updates via the Group Policy. First of all, you need to determine the identifier of the device for which you want to disable the automatic driver updates.

1. Open the device manager snap-in (devmgmt.msc). In the hardware list find the device you need and open its properties;
2. Go to the Detail tab and select “Hardware IDs” from the drop-down list;
3. Copy the values of the hardware identifiers associated with the device (in the format PCI\VEN_15AD&DEV_ ….) into the notepad.exe;
4. In the Group Policy Editor console (gpedit.msc for local computer or gpmc.msc for domain workstations) go to the section Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System -> Device Installation -> Device Installation Restrictions. Enable the policy “Prevent installation of devices that match any of these device IDs”;
5. Click the “Show” button in the policy settings and copy the graphic card IDs you received earlier into the table of values;
6. Save the changes and update the group policies setting on the client with the command: gpupdate /force ;
7. Now, if the computer receives and downloads driver updates for these devices through WindowsUpdate, an error message will appear during their automatic installation (The installation of this device is forbidden by system policy. Contact your system administrator).

Also you can enable this policy through the registry. To do this, run the registry editor (regedit.exe) and go to the registry key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DeviceInstall\Restrictions\DenyDeviceIDs. In this section, create string (REG_SZ) parameters with the names in order, starting with 1 and the hardware ID value in each parameter.

You can disable driver updates for specific device types (printers, sound cards, USB controllers, etc) using the policy “Prevent installation of devices using drivers that match these device setup classes”. To do this, you need to specify the device class GUID. For example, <4d36e972-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318>is a class of network adapters, <4d36e979-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318>and <4658ee7e-f050-11d1-b6bd-00c04fa372a7>– printers, etc.

How to Disable Driver Updates in Hardware Settings?

The easiest way to prevent Windows from automatic drivers update is to change the system settings on the Hardware tab. To do this:

• Press Win + X and click System;
• In the Related settings section click on the link System Info;
• In the left part of the window, click Advanced System Settings;
• In the next window, go to Hardware tab and click Device Installation Settings;
• In the Device Installation Settings window, check “No, let me choose what to do” and then “Never install driver software from Windows Update“;
• Save changes and restart your computer.

How to Stop Automatic Driver Updates Using Group Policies?

You can disable device driver updates in Windows 10 through Windows Update using Group Policies (it is also easier to configure settings on several computers in the AD domain at once via GPO or by copying the settings of local GPOs between computers in the workgroup using LGPO.exe):

1. Press Win + R and type gpedit.msc in the next window (in Windows Home editions you can run the local group policy editor like this);
2. In the Local Group Policy Editor, go to Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System ->Device Installation ->Device Installation Restrictions;
3. Find the policy Prevent installation of devices not described by other policy setting;
4. Enable the policy (“Enabled”) and save the changes;
5. Then enable the policy “Specify search order for device driver source locations”. This policy is located in the section Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System -> Device Installation). Change the policy setting to “Do not search Windows Update”. This policy allows you to exclude the search for driver updates on Windows Update sites (when installing a driver for any Windows device, it tries to find a more suitable driver through the Windows Update service);
6. Go to the section Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Update, find and enable the policy named “Do not include drivers with Windows Update”;

How to Disable Driver Updates in the Registry?

In Windows 10 Home editions with no Group Policy Editor, driver updates can be turned off using the Registry Editor.

1. Open the Registry Editor (regedit.exe);
2. Go to the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DriverSearching;
3. In the right panel, find SearchOrderConfig parameter and change its value to 0 (default value is 1, which means that the system allows driver updates);
4. You also need to change the value of the ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate parameter to 1 (in the registry key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate);
5. Save the changes.

You can apply this setting with the following commands:

reg add «HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate» /v ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
reg add «HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DriverSearching» /v SearchOrderConfig /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

After the reboot, the automatic update of the drivers in the system will be blocked.

Several times I have seen that administrators disable driver updates after deploying a Windows 10 image and installing all the necessary drivers. To do this, you can disable the installation of the driver using the policy “Prevent installation of devices not described by other policy settings” (discussed above) or the command:

reg add «HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DeviceInstall\Restrictions» /v DenyUnspecified /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

How to Disable Windows 10 From Automatically Installing Realtek Drivers

Previously one would choose the settings to update windows and device drivers. However, after the release of Windows 10, most updates are forced on your system. Apart from the Windows Build updates and forced hot fixes, Windows 10 now updates your device drivers in order to keep your system working at the highest efficiency. This is because Microsoft noticed that most problems on Windows 10 were caused by bad or outdated drivers.

This has brought to the problem of installing driver applications to manage the driver options. One such complaint is the updating of Realtek audio drivers which then installs the application to manage it. This application might not function properly in some systems. On tenforums.com, a user complained that: “I don’t want the Realtek audio drivers as it completely messes with my audio and also doesn’t correctly switch when I plug in headphones for example. It also doesn’t allow for the ‘speaker fill’ enhancement to be used when playing stereo content through surround sound. Windows itself does a far better job as opposed to Realtek. Every time I uninstall Realtek it automatically gets reinstalled. Sorry Microsoft, you don’t know best.” There have also been several complaints from Reddit users.

Realtek drivers are sound drivers for your PC. The Realtek Audio Manager is supplied by Realtek and it allows you to manage your connection and improve sound stability and sound quality. Your motherboard may have an on-board sound built into it because of which you have the Realtek audio manager installed on your computer. However, it looks like Realtek Audio Manager doesn’t seem to work very well in Windows 10, thus generating a lot of complaints. It seems that every time windows finds that your Realtek drivers are not up to date, it updates them and gives you the Realtek Audio Manager application. Uninstalling the application from the uninstaller will just create a loop because doing that also uninstalls the latest sound drivers.

For some people, the Realtek sound manager can be annoying and not actually work for them. If it unappealing to you, here is our guide on how to get rid of it and still have your soundcard working.

Removing Realtek Sound Manager

Method 1: Prevent Automatic Installation, Reinstall windows manually and Change the bit rate settings

The idea is to disable automatic installations and delete the already updated drivers. We will then install new drivers manually. Since the system is denied from making changes to the driver, it will now not be able to install Realtek Audio Manager.

1. Let the driver install and take over.
2. Go to Control Panel > System and Security > Advanced System Settings > Hardware tab. Click on Device Installation Settings and choose ‘No (your device might not work as expected)’ to prevent Windows from automatically downloading device drivers.
3. Go to Device Manager by: pressing Windows/Start Key + R and type devmgmt.msc in the run box and hit enter. Right-click Realtek HD Audio Device from (the sounds video and game controller expansion) and choose ‘Disable’.
4. Right-click Realtek HD Audio Device again and this time choose ‘Update Driver’.
5. A Dialogue will appear with options to automatically search for the driver online, search on disk or select from a list. Choose to select from a list. A list will appear containing the Realtek driver and the Microsoft generic driver. Select the Microsoft driver (High Definition Audio Device) and OK. You will get a warning about compatibility but ignore it.
6. Restart. When the system comes back up open the sound mixer. You should see in the window title bar that it is using the High Definition Audio Device.
7. Just one more thing to do. Right-click the speaker icon in the task bar and chose Playback devices. Select Speakers then click on Properties. Go to the Advanced tab and change the sample rate and bit depth to the highest possible on your system.

Method 2: Uninstall Realtek Audio Manager, install new drivers and deny the system the permissions to the Realtek system folder

This method will reinstall the drivers back to the drivers that were installed before Realtek Audio manager was installed on your PC. On every restart/reboot Windows would try to install the driver, but fail because folder access was denied. It will instead re-install the Microsoft driver and continue with the boot (this information can be seen from the Event Logs). This might slightly extend the boot time.

1. Press Windows/Start Key + R to open Run
2. Type appwiz.cpl on the run textbox and hit enter.
3. From the Programs and Features window, double click on Realtek HD Audio Manager to uninstall the program. This will also uninstall the sound drivers, so we will need to reinstall them.
4. Go to Device Manager by: pressing Windows/Start Key + R and type devmgmt.msc in the run box and hit enter. Right-click Realtek HD Audio Device from (the sounds video and game controller expansion) and choose “Update Driver’.
5. A Dialogue will appear with options to automatically search for the driver online, search on disk or select from a list. Choose to select from a list. A list will appear containing the Realtek driver and the Microsoft generic driver. Select the Microsoft driver (High Definition Audio Device) and OK. You will get a warning about compatibility but ignore it.
6. Go to this local disk C: path: C:\Program Files\Realtek\Audio\HDA
7. Right click anywhere that is blank and choose properties.
8. Go the security tab and click on Edit
9. Select “SYSTEM” by clicking on it on the Group or user names options.
10. In the Permissions for SYSTEM, check the deny checkbox in the full control option.
11. Press OK twice to accept these changes
12. Restart your computer

Method 3: Roll back drivers

Rolling back your driver will install the driver that you were using before the Realtek Audio Manager got installed. Simply:

1. Go to Device Manager by: pressing Windows/Start Key + R and type devmgmt.msc in the run box and hit enter.
2. Right-click Realtek HD Audio Device from (the sounds video and game controller expansion) and choose “Roll Back Driver’.

Windows 10 remembers this action and no longer tries to reinstall the driver.