Windows

How to Update Drivers in Windows 10

Contents

Drivers play a crucial role to keep your system performing well. Here, every device manufacturer keeps on releasing latest updates to their drivers so that it works well over time. Further, Old drivers may cause system lags and other performance issues. Thus, we suggest you keep your Windows 10 drivers up-to-date to avoid any system errors.

How to Verify Driver requires Update in Windows 10:

Before you begin a process to update drivers on your Windows 10 system, you can visit settings of your system to verify whether drivers on your PC require the update. Here, you can check into system settings to know you are using an up-to-date version of driver or not. It will display you useful information such as driver version and driver date to verify. To do this, follow below-mentioned steps.

  • Go to the Search box and search and select Device Manager.
  • Once you are on Device Manager window, expand the category with the hardware that you want to update.
  • Now right-click on the device that you want to update and select Properties.
  • Click on the Driver tab to view details related to a selected device driver.
  • Here, you will find all the information including driver provider, driver version, driver date and digital signer. Look for information next to driver version and driver date to verify if you have the latest driver installed on your system or not. To do this, you can verify this detail with the information on the manufacturer’s website.

IntelR 82574L Gigabit Network connection properties

Note: You can perform the above-mentioned steps after updating drivers as well to verify if the driver has been updated properly or not.

Use Windows Update to Update Drivers in Windows 10:

In general, practice, when you update your system using Windows Update, it will also help you update drivers on the system as well. Updating drivers using Windows Update is one of the safest ways you can perform. Here, packages related to driver updates is verified and signed by Microsoft that makes it more secure. You can follow this step when your hardware manufacturer is using Windows Update services to publish its driver updates. Here, you can download new version available of driver, download & install it with simple Window Update. To do this, follow below mentioned steps.

  • Go to Settings.
  • Tap on Update & Security.
  • Click on Windows Update and then “Check for Updates” button.
  • Here, your system will check for all available updates and help you install them instantly.

Windows Update

Note: This process is considered to be one of the safest ways to update drivers but it has its own limitations. Here, it is possible that it may take longer until the manufacturer makes available a new update for their hardware driver. Thus, it will take more time to you until you get a recent update for your driver. Though this might not be the problem with Microsoft hardware.

How to update drivers using Device Manager:

If you have recently downloaded the latest updates using Windows Update and still you find certain drivers are not up-to-day then you can use a built-in utility called Device Manager to update your drivers. It will help you find and install all the latest updates effortlessly. Here, if you are facing issues with some hardware device due to the old driver then we suggest you follow this step for instant and effective results.

To update the driver using Device Manager, follow these steps.

  1. Search and select “device manager” from the search box. Alternatively, click Windows + X keys and select Device Manager from the given options.
  2. Once you are on Device Manager window, expand one of the categories with the hardware that you wish to update the driver for. (let’s say, you want to update the driver for graphics cards, then you need to expand the related category to it called Display Adaptors).
  3. Right-click on it (alternatively tap and hold) and select “Update Driver” option.

Device Managar

It will provide you with two options:

  • First “Search automatically for updated driver software” to help you update drivers in Windows 10 automatically.
  • Second “Browse my computer for driver software” where you need to browse the location of the downloaded driver file.

If you click on the first option, it will help you search all updates automatically and help you update drivers for seamless performance. If you select the second option then you need to follow the below step.

Update Drivers Manually: If you have selected the first option above and it didn’t suggest any driver to update then you can follow the manual way to update drivers. Here, if you know that the latest update for certain driver is available then you can select the second option to manually update the driver. Before doing that, you need to download the latest driver from the manufacturer’s site and follow the instructions.

Update Drivers

If instructions are not given then you need to download .exe or .zip file with the driver and extract it. To extract it, you can double-click on the file and extract it to the desired location on your system. Now once you have downloaded the update file, click on the second option “Browse my computer for driver software”. Here, click on Browse button and select the file that you have extracted. Click Ok and check the “Include Subfolders” option. It will help you find the correct .inf file with required instructions to update the driver. Now click on Next button and finish the process. Here, the latest version of your hardware driver will be installed on your system. It will help you fix performance issues seamlessly or bring you additional functions on your Windows 10 system.

Update Drivers 2

Note: You can manually update the drivers when you have older hardware or printers attached to your Windows 10 system. In addition to that, you can also follow a manual process when you find an issue updating drivers automatically.

Other Methods

Update drivers from manufacturer’s site: If you find the certain driver which is not updated after Windows Update and using Device Manager utility then we suggest you visit that driver’s manufacturer’s site. Here, you will find all the related information related to your driver and latest updates to install. To do this, you need to follow on-screen instruction and it will update your driver easily.

Use driver updater software: Next best solution to update all drivers on your system is to use driver update software tools. These tools look for all updates online and help you update your drivers automatically. These smart tools take backup of your existing driver settings so that you can recall changes anytime. Further, you can use these tools to schedule updates to save your time & efforts. It even allows you to select which drivers you want to update. You can use these powerful solutions for instant and effective results.

Reinstall Driver: If you have tried everything else and nothing seems to be working then you can reinstall drivers as a last resort. Here, first, you need to uninstall the driver which you want to reinstall. To do this, open Device Manager, expand the category of hardware you want to reinstall the driver for, right-click on the device driver and press Uninstall. Now reboot your PC and Windows will try to reinstall that driver for you automatically.

Conclusion:

Up-to-date drivers are the basic requirement of your system that helps you keep your Windows 10 performance intact. Here, we have discussed some simple ways to help you do that. If you know more such steps feel free to comment below.

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