How to reinstall a driver with Windows Device manager

To reinstall a device’s driver in Windows Device Manager:

• Step1: On your keyboard, press the Windows logo key and R at the same time to invoke the Run box.
• Step2: Type devmgmt.msc and click OK.

(There are other ways to open Device Manager; it changes depending on your version of Windows. But the above method works for all versions of Windows, including Windows 11, 10 and 7.)

• Step3: Expand a category to see the devices in that category. Right-click the device whose driver you’d like to reinstall, and select Uninstall.

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• Step4: Restart your PC.

• Step5: Windows will attempt to reinstall the driver.

Try Driver Easy for free

If you want the certainty of knowing your device drivers are always up to date (and not just sometimes up to date, which is all you get from Windows Device Manager), and you don’t have the time, patience or computer skills to continually update them manually, give the free version of Driver Easy a try.

Download Free Version

The free version will identify all your outdated drivers, and allow you to download them all. But only one at a time and, once they’re downloaded, you have to manually install them using the standard Windows process. (To automatically update all your drivers with 1 click, you’ll need the Pro version of Driver Easy . Don’t worry, it comes with a 30-day, no-questions-asked, money back satisfaction guarantee.)

Why update your drivers in Windows 11, 10 & Windows 7?

Many computer issues are caused by outdated device drivers. Particularly in Windows 10/11.

So if your computer has slowed down, you should update your drivers. If it’s crashing or hanging, update your drivers. If you can’t connect to the internet, update your drivers. If your mouse, keyboard, monitor or speakers are acting up, update your drivers. In fact, no matter what your issue, there’s a good chance updating your drivers will fix it.

To understand why, you first have to understand what drivers actually are…

Why you can’t rely on Windows to keep your drivers up-to-date

Windows comes with an inbuilt tool, called ‘Windows Update’, that’s supposed to automatically keep your drivers up to date. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work very well.

There are two reasons why…

• Device manufacturers often take a long time to get their drivers into a Windows Update – It’s a time-consuming and difficult process. Sometimes they just miss the deadline and have to wait ‘til the next Windows Update, and sometimes they just give up altogether. In fact, for older devices, this is the norm.

• Windows Update ignores driver updates it considers ‘optional’ – It categorizes driver updates as either ‘critical’, ‘automatic’ or ‘optional’, and it doesn’t usually concern itself with the ‘optional’ ones – even when they’re actually important. You can install them manually by going to the ‘Optional updates’ screen but, even then, as described above, you’re unlikely to get all the latest drivers.

What are drivers?

Drivers are like interpreters between Windows and your devices. For example, when Windows needs to display something on your monitor, it sends a command to your graphics card, and your graphics card then displays what Windows wants on your monitor.

But Windows and your graphics card don’t actually speak the same language. To understand each other, they need a translator. That translator is called a driver. It takes the Windows command and translates it into something your graphics card can understand. Your graphics card can then do as it’s told, and display the right thing on your monitor.

Similarly, if your graphics card needs to send some sort of response back to Windows, the driver translates the response into something Windows can understand.

In this example, what we’re talking about is a video driver, but your computer has many other drivers on it too – one for each device. Your speakers, your printer, your mouse, your USB hard drives, your network card, your keyboard and so on – they each have an associated driver.

And without all these drivers, none of your devices will work.

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