Device drivers are very important for the well-functioning of different processes on Windows 10 PC. However, at times, a few of them start causing issues and affect the overall system operability. In such a scenario, what you can do is update the affected drivers. If this doesn’t suit your purpose, just disable the problematic device driver.
Although rarely but there are chances that your PC has automatically disabled a few device drivers that it finds problematic. To resolve this, we will also see how to re-enable such drivers on your computer.
How do I Turn Off a device driver on Windows 10?
In case you are facing difficulty and know exactly which driver is the problematic one, use the below steps.
- Press Win + X to launch the Power Menu and select Device Manager.
- Click the “>” icon to expand and see the contents of a particular branch.
- Since you already know the buggy device driver, right-click on it and select the “Disable device” option.
- If any confirmation message pops up, hit the Yes button.
- After disabling the device driver, make sure to restart the computer.
On Windows, device drivers never uninstall. So, the uninstalled driver will pop up again whenever called upon. If you want to manually check if the driver is still there, go and click on the button – Scan for hardware changes.
How do I Turn on a stopped device driver on Windows 10?
If you had accidentally or knowingly stopped a device driver on your computer, and now want to re-enable that, follow these easy steps –
- Right-click on the Windows icon and select Device Manager.
- Hit the “>” icon left of the exact section inside which you had disabled a device driver.
- Make a right-click on the specific driver and click the “
Enable device” option.
- That’s it, the selected device driver will automatically turn on within a few seconds.
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