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How can I prevent Windows Update from automatically updating my drivers?

Introduction

In certain situations, you may want to prevent Windows from automatically obtaining driver updates through Windows Updates. Typically, this concerns the following scenarios:

  1. When Windows rolls out a driver that has a specific incompatibility with the current system. This can sometimes concern, for example, the combination of new graphics drivers and certain displays.
  2. If you deliberately (e.g. for performance reasons) want to install a very new driver directly from the component manufacturer and prevent Windows from overwriting the new driver with an older driver.

Instructions

If you want to disable automatic driver updates via Windows Update, follow this procedure:

Step 1: Disable Automatic Driver Updates

  1. Right click on the Start Menu icon and select "System" ("System" is located in the list above "Device Manager").
  2. The Windows Settings will open in the "About" category.
  3. Under "Related settings", click on "Advanced system settings".
  4. A dialog box with the title "System Properties" will open.
    1. This dialog box can also be reached with this shortcut: Win+R: sysdm.cpl
  5. Select the Hardware tab.
  6. Click on the "Device Installation Settings" button.
  7. Select "No" in the dialog box, click Save Changes and confirm (see screenshot).

Step 2: Clear Windows Update Cache

  1. This step is necessary because the previous step only affects new, future drivers. It does not yet affect drivers that have already been downloaded via Windows Update before.
  2. Navigate to this folder path: C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download, e.g. by copying the path from here and pasting it into the address bar of Windows Explorer.
  3. Make sure you are in the right path (see screenshot).
  4. Delete all content in this path (Shift+Del bypasses the Recyle Bin).
  5. Reboot your System.

Step 3: Install the desired driver manually

The action has now been completed. You can now install your desired driver manually \u2013 either from our download portal or directly from the component manufacturer. Windows Update will no longer overwrite the driver.

Recommendation

Since the automatic driver updates via Windows Update are generally useful, we would only recommend this measure if there is really a specific reason regarding troubleshooting or performance.