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> That sucks. I much preferred the drivers Windows automatically finds over navigating shitty vendor websites that break their links every other year and someti

> That sucks. I much preferred the drivers Windows automatically finds over navigating shitty vendor websites that break their links every other year and sometimes just take down all drivers for some of their product. I think you're conflating at least 2 other Windows features with the one removed. Microsoft didn't get rid of the database of WHQL drivers that ship with Windows, they didn't get rid of the Windows Update mechanism for updating those drivers. They got rid of the feature to search online for a driver when Plug-And-Play setup fails or when you manually go into the Device Manager and click the Update Driver button on a device. The only time I've seen this feature kick in was when I plugged in a brand new GPU or random microcontroller board (e.g. Digispark). In either case it failed. I honestly don't recall the feature ever working.

jeroenhd 6y ago
I've had this feature fix many problems for family members with broken (and usually cheap) laptops. Uninstall the existing driver, pull the official one down from Microsoft. It also helped me update some drivers that hadn't come in via Windows Update yet for some weird USB device, probably because it wasn't plugged in when the update process ran.
- cptskippy 6y ago
  > Uninstall the existing driver, pull the official one down from Microsoft. Are you specifically selecting that search option after it fails to install a driver? If you're just uninstalling the vendor provided drivers, removing the vendor drivers from disk, and redetecting the hardware then Windows might just be pulling a WHQL driver off disk that it already has. Most Windows installs come with a cache of WHQL drivers for common devices, companies like Synaptics, Realtek, etc will provide a single driver that supports most of their devices. In rare cases where you have a device with limited storage (e.g. a cheap tablet) then it might not have those drivers, but that's not the norm.

jeroenhd 6y ago

I've had this feature fix many problems for family members with broken (and usually cheap) laptops. Uninstall the existing driver, pull the official one down from Microsoft. It also helped me update some drivers that hadn't come in via Windows Update yet for some weird USB device, probably because it wasn't plugged in when the update process ran.

cptskippy 6y ago
> Uninstall the existing driver, pull the official one down from Microsoft. Are you specifically selecting that search option after it fails to install a driver? If you're just uninstalling the vendor provided drivers, removing the vendor drivers from disk, and redetecting the hardware then Windows might just be pulling a WHQL driver off disk that it already has. Most Windows installs come with a cache of WHQL drivers for common devices, companies like Synaptics, Realtek, etc will provide a single driver that supports most of their devices. In rare cases where you have a device with limited storage (e.g. a cheap tablet) then it might not have those drivers, but that's not the norm.