You download the latest driver for your graphics card from NVIDIA, AMD or Intel, install it, and everything is fine. A day or two later a game stutters, or a setting is missing, and Device Manager shows a driver two years old. Nothing told you. Windows Update quietly replaced the driver you chose with the one it prefers, and it will do it again after you reinstall yours.
This article explains why it happens, and shows the setting that stops it. The main method takes two minutes and works on Windows 10 and Windows 11. There is also a way to block just one device if you still want Windows Update to supply the rest of your drivers.
Checked on Windows 10 Pro 22H2 and Windows 11 in November 2026.
Windows Update does not compare version numbers. It looks at the hardware ID of each device and offers whatever driver ranks highest in its catalogue for that ID. The ranking prefers a driver whose ID is a closer match, and a driver published by your PC's maker for that exact model usually matches more closely than the generic one from the chip maker. So a two-year-old driver that Dell, HP or Lenovo tested for your laptop outranks the current driver from NVIDIA or Intel, and Windows installs it over the top of yours.
Microsoft has acknowledged the problem and is changing how graphics drivers are matched, using the computer hardware ID as well as the device ID, so that a driver meant for one PC model is not pushed to another. The change is being phased in for new drivers through late 2026 and early 2027 and does not touch the drivers already in the catalogue, so for now the fix is on your side.
There is one policy for this, and it has been in Windows since version 1607. It stops Windows Update offering anything with a Driver classification. Security and quality updates for Windows itself are not affected.
Then open an administrator Command Prompt and run gpupdate /force, or restart.
Home editions do not have the Group Policy editor, but the policy is only a registry value, so you can set it directly. Open an administrator Command Prompt and run:
reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate" /v ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /fOr save this as a .reg file and double-click it:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate]
"ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate"=dword:00000001Restart afterwards. This is exactly what the Group Policy editor writes on the Pro editions, so the two methods are interchangeable.
The policy only stops the next replacement. If Windows has already downgraded you, install the driver you want again. For a graphics card, use the installer from NVIDIA, AMD or Intel and choose a clean install if it offers one. Intel's advice is to install the new driver over the one Windows put there rather than uninstalling first.
With this policy on, Windows Update will no longer update any driver, including network, audio, chipset and printer drivers, so those become your job. In practice the drivers that matter come from the hardware maker's installer anyway, and the ones Windows was supplying were often the stale ones. Windows can still find a driver for a newly plugged-in device, because that goes through device installation rather than Windows Update. To stop that too, see Method 2.
A second, older switch controls whether Windows goes online for a driver when a device is first detected. On its own it does not reliably stop the downgrade above, which comes through Windows Update, but combined with Method 1 it closes the other door.
The registry equivalent is:
reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DriverSearching" /v SearchOrderConfig /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /fIf you want Windows Update to keep looking after everything except the graphics card, block that device by its hardware ID instead. This needs the Group Policy editor, so it is for the Pro editions.
Windows will now refuse any new driver for that ID, from Windows Update or anywhere else. That includes you, so when you want to install a newer driver yourself, set the policy back to Not Configured, run the installer, then enable it again.
Microsoft's Show or hide updates troubleshooter (wushowhide.diagcab) lets you hide a single offered update, including a driver, so Windows Update skips it. Microsoft no longer offers it for download, but copies are still around and it still runs on Windows 10 and 11. It is a good answer if the same one driver keeps coming back and you want to change nothing else. Hide the driver after installing the one you want, otherwise Windows may install the hidden one before you get to it.
Set the policy to Not Configured in the Group Policy editor, or delete the registry value:
reg delete "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate" /v ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate /fThen restart. Driver updates appear again on the next check.
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