For every physical peripheral installed on your computer, there needs to be a driver installed to let it function properly and communicate with the operating system. For instance, without a Wi-Fi driver, you will not be able to connect to the Internet even though you have a physical Wi-Fi card installed on your computer.
Thus, for this reason, Windows, by default, keeps all the drivers updated to their latest version without user intervention.
However, there are several scenarios when you might not need it; you could be running proprietary software that requires a specific version of a particular driver, or you have an old PC that doesn’t have the bandwidth to keep up with the updates. Whatever your reason, there are multiple ways you can disable the automatic updates for drivers on your Windows 11 computer.
1. Disable Automatic Driver Updates Using Settings
First, head to the Start Menu and click on the ‘Settings’ tile to proceed.
After that, ensure that you have selected the ‘System’ tab from the left sidebar.
Next, select the ‘About’ tile from the right section of the window to proceed.
Then, scroll down and click on the ‘Advanced System Settings’ option to continue. This will open a separate window on your screen.
From the ‘System Properties’ window, head to the ‘Hardware’ tab and click ‘Device Installation Settings’. This will bring a separate window to your screen.
Now, select the ‘No’ option and click ‘Save Changes’. You will need administrator rights to do so. Hence, if you are not logged in with an admin account, enter the credentials for one.
2. Turn Off Automatic Driver Updates Using Registry Editor
Head to the Start Menu and type Registry to perform a search. Then, click on the ‘Registry Editor’ tile.
After that, type or copy+paste the below-mentioned directory into the address bar and hit Enter.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DriverSearching
Then, double-click on the ‘SearchOrderConfig’ file. This will open its properties.
Afterward, from the properties window, overwrite the ‘Value’ field to 0 and click ‘OK’ to save the changes.
3. Use the Group Policy Editor to Stop Automatic Driver Updates
First, head to the Start Menu and type Group Policy to perform a search. Then, click on the ‘Edit Group Policy’ tile.
After that, select ‘Computer Configuration’ and then select ‘Administrative Templates’ from the left sidebar.
Next, from the right section of the window, click on ‘Windows Components’ to proceed.
Afterward, double-click on the ‘Windows Update’ to continue.
Next, double-click on ‘Manage Updates offered from Windows Update’.
On the next screen, double-click on the ‘Do not include drivers with Windows Updates’. This will open its properties.
Finally, click on the ‘Enabled’ option. Then, click ‘Apply’ and ‘OK’ to save changes.
Keeping the drivers up-to-date is very important. However, if your work or PC condition requires you to turn them off, this guide will help you to do so.
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