System tower · floor

How to update drivers on Windows, and the optional ones

Anybody asking how to update drivers is really asking two questions at once: what the machine is already doing on its own, and what is left over for them to do. Microsoft answers both, and the answers are shorter than the question deserves.

So the first move is not to update anything. It is to establish whether the driver you are thinking about is one Windows already looks after. For the four categories Microsoft names, the answer is yes, automatically, and the version you have is — in Microsoft’s own words — normally recent.

Which leaves the part worth knowing, because Windows does not do it for you — and says so in a note easy to read past.

The second step is the one to check first. Receive updates for other Microsoft products has to be on, and Microsoft puts it inside the procedure rather than assuming it — a separate switch from the main update setting, three levels below the button most people press.

If Windows Update has nothing and the optional list has nothing, Microsoft’s next route is Device Manager, where a driver can be updated “either automatically or manually”, and where it can also be reinstalled. Its instruction before starting a reinstall is worth repeating because it is easy to skip: “Save all work and close all apps”, then right-click the Start menu and open Device Manager. Reinstalling the driver for a device you are currently using is not a background operation.

And after that, Microsoft points outwards rather than pretending it has an answer for everything: if Windows does not find a new driver, look on the device manufacturer’s website and follow their instructions. That is the last documented step, and it is a reason to be careful about what a search engine returns for a driver name — the manufacturer’s own site is a specific destination, not a category of result.

One dated fact that changes the advice. Microsoft states on the same page: “Support for Windows 10 has ended on October 14, 2025. After October 14, 2025, Microsoft will no longer provide free software updates from Windows Update, technical assistance, or security fixes for Windows 10.” Everything on this floor assumes Windows Update is delivering drivers. On a machine that is no longer receiving updates from it, the whole premise changes — and the question stops being which drivers to update and becomes what to do about the operating system.

The floors below take it three ways: what Windows already does for you, the optional updates and where they hide, and the neighbouring problems people are usually trying to solve when they arrive at drivers.

What this tower will not do

It will not tell you your drivers are out of date. Microsoft says the ones Windows Update delivers are normally recent, and that sentence is quoted here rather than talked around.

It will not name a driver updater program. Microsoft states which route it considers best, and judging the products against that would need testing this floor has not done.

And it will not send you to a search engine for a driver. The last documented step is the device manufacturer’s own website, which is a specific place rather than a search result. What holds instead is simple: the definition of a driver, the statement that Windows Update is the best route and that its drivers are normally recent, the note that optional drivers are not installed automatically, the path to the optional updates list, the instruction to restart regardless and the Windows 10 support end date are quoted from Microsoft’s support documentation, listed below.