{"id":444,"date":"2010-12-17T17:49:56","date_gmt":"2010-12-17T12:49:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.devicedriverfinder.com\/blog\/?p=444"},"modified":"2022-09-28T18:48:37","modified_gmt":"2022-09-28T13:48:37","slug":"how-to-disable-automatic-driver-updates-in-vista","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.devicedriverfinder.com\/blog\/device-drivers\/how-to-disable-automatic-driver-updates-in-vista","title":{"rendered":"How to Disable Automatic Driver Updates in Vista\/Windows 7"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In general, you want to keep your computer up to date, including device drivers. But if you have a driver-related problem, installing an older version can sometimes solve the issue. And in that case, you do not want <strong>Windows Update<\/strong> to automatically update the driver again. It could also be that there is no driver for your hardware in Windows 7, but a Vista driver works. In those cases you want to manually install it and not rely on the Windows driver update service, so just disable automatic driver updates in Windows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Steps to disable automatic driver updates<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In Vista and Windows 7 you can easily disable the automatic driver updates. Just follow these steps:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Open the <strong>Control Panel<\/strong><\/li><li>Select <strong>System and Maintenance<\/strong><\/li><li>Select <strong>System<\/strong><\/li><li>Now click <strong>Advanced system settings<\/strong> in the left-hand panel (if the UAC is turned on, click <strong>Continue <\/strong>to proceed)<\/li><li>Next, click the <strong>Hardware<\/strong> tab<\/li><li>Click the <strong>Windows Update Driver Settings<\/strong> button<br><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 5px;\" title=\"Windows Update Driver Settins\" src=\"http:\/\/www.devicedriverfinder.com\/images\/windows-update-driver-settings.jpg\" alt=\"Disable automatic driver updates\" width=\"403\" height=\"344\"><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Now you need to select the driver update option you want to use.<br>The default option will automatically check for drivers and update them. To disable automatic driver updates in Vista, select either the second or third option and click <strong>OK<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Use the Group Policy Editor<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In some cases, this appears not to work, and then there is another method to disable automatic driver updates in Vista and Windows 7. This involves the <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/previous-versions\/windows\/it-pro\/windows-server-2012-r2-and-2012\/dn265982(v=ws.11)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">local group policy editor<\/a>, which can be started from the <strong>Start<\/strong> menu by typing <code>gpedit.msc<\/code> followed by <strong>Enter<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once started, in the <strong>Local Group Policy Editor<\/strong>, navigate to the following: <strong>Computer Configuration<\/strong> -&gt; <strong>Administrative Templates<\/strong> -&gt; <strong>System<\/strong> -&gt; <strong>Driver Installation<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/devicedriverfinder.com\/images\/disable-automatic-driver-update-in-windows.png\" alt=\"Turn off Windows Update device driver search prompt\" title=\"Disable Automatic Driver Update\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Next, change the setting for <strong>Turn Off Windows Update Device Driver Search Prompt<br><\/strong> to Enabled. After clicking <strong>OK <\/strong>and closing the Local Group Policy Editor, just restart Windows and that&#8217;s it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since the Local Group Policy Editor is used, this second option is limited to the Professional and Ultimate editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7. The Home versions do not have this option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For Windows 10 and Windows 11, you can also disable automatic updates using the instructions in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.devicedriverfinder.com\/blog\/device-drivers\/how-to-disable-automatic-driver-updates-in-windows-10\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In general, you want to keep your computer up to date, including device drivers. But if you have a driver-related problem, installing an older version can sometimes solve the issue. And in that case, you do not want Windows Update to automatically update the driver again. It could also be that there is no driver [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[79,77,32],"class_list":["post-444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-device-drivers","tag-disable-driver-updates","tag-vista","tag-windows-7"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devicedriverfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devicedriverfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devicedriverfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devicedriverfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devicedriverfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.devicedriverfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":802,"href":"https:\/\/www.devicedriverfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions\/802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devicedriverfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devicedriverfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devicedriverfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}