Solved Important Notice About Importing Windows 10 Drivers To Windows 11

nIGHTmAYOR · Oct 29, 2021

I have been researching weather or not older Windows 10 drivers needs to be Moded to be imported over to Windows 11 for all hardware that were not considered Windows 11 capable (such as those that are non TPM 2.0 or UEFI capable) that were able to upgrade still by applying Microsoft registry hacks , only to realize this :

The driver composition structure of Windows 11 drivers is not any different to that of Windows 10 meaning you can theoretically install any Windows 10 driver over Windows 11 even if the driver does not contain reference to Windows 11 in its compatibility attributes .

However as Windows 11 manages to setup its own set of unoptimized drivers from Microsoft catalog , sometimes some of these drivers are configured in a way to prevent being updated or replaced by any other driver .

The work around to fix that is to "Disable Drivers Automatic Updates" from System > About > Advanced System Settings > Hardware > Device Installation Settings. Then choose "No (your device might not work as expected)" , then unplug from the internet , un-install the Microsoft catalog driver from Device Manager > Right Click the device > Uninstall and then choose to delete it as well on confirmation then restart .

The result would be your device would be ready to install the Windows 10 driver without any complains .

Cheers

TigerTom · Oct 29, 2021

nIGHTmAYOR said:
un-install the Microsoft catalog driver and choose to delete it as well on confirmation then restart .

Sounds interesting! And how to uninstall this catalog driver? Never heard of it in all my Win years.

CountMike · Oct 29, 2021

TigerTom said:
Sounds interesting! And how to uninstall this catalog driver? Never heard of it in all my Win years.

Same way as ever, "Catalog drivers" ie Drivers from MS driver catalog. That also can mean that those drivers are given to MS from particular HW part manufacturer. Often (or at least should be) they are certified as WDDM but also pretty basic and somewhat stale.

nIGHTmAYOR · Oct 29, 2021

TigerTom said:
Sounds interesting! And how to uninstall this catalog driver? Never heard of it in all my Win years.

Device Manager > Right click it > Uninstall

CountMike · Oct 29, 2021

Or using DDU Display Driver Uninstaller Download version 18.0.4.5 for more detailed cleanup of drivers for GPU and sound.

jimbo45 · Oct 29, 2021

Hi there
If you install W11 and find some devices are marked as unknown device etc currently by far the simplest method until W11 drivers are available is simply to do the following

Ensure you copy the latest W10 system drivers that work on your machine by just copying (and its subfolders) the contents of windows\system32\DriverStore to a folder that is acessible to W11 system.

Then in device manager just go down all the devices that have problems against them one by one and select update driver -> use this pc and point to the folder you set the driver store to. Simple, easy no 3rd party stuff or messing around with what inf files etc to copy.

For drivers that still don't work --hardware is much too new so just wait -- the actual hardware details can be got from the event manager with the Vendor info which you can then google for.

Pretty well all W10 drivers currently seem to work - at least on the non preview release builds.

Cheers
jimbo

Ghot · Oct 29, 2021

jimbo45 said:
Ensure you copy the latest W10 system drivers that work on your machine by just copying (and its subfolders) the contents of windows\system32\DriverStore to a folder that is acessible to W11 system.

Then in device manager just go down all the devices that have problems against them one by one and select update driver -> use this pc and point to the folder you set the driver store to. Simple, easy no 3rd party stuff or messing around with what inf files etc to copy.

That's a pretty good idea. :)

nIGHTmAYOR · Oct 29, 2021

jimbo45 said:
Hi there
If you install W11 and find some devices are marked as unknown device etc currently by far the simplest method until W11 drivers are available is simply to do the following

Ensure you copy the latest W10 system drivers that work on your machine by just copying (and its subfolders) the contents of windows\system32\DriverStore to a folder that is acessible to W11 system.

Then in device manager just go down all the devices that have problems against them one by one and select update driver -> use this pc and point to the folder you set the driver store to. Simple, easy no 3rd party stuff or messing around with what inf files etc to copy.

For drivers that still don't work --hardware is much too new so just wait -- the actual hardware details can be got from the event manager with the Vendor info which you can then google for.

Pretty well all W10 drivers currently seem to work - at least on the non preview release builds.

Cheers
jimbo

If you came across a device that is Windows 10 approved and its driver fail to install , can you please provide information about it so I can inspect it ? I need to analyze one of those .

jimbo45 · Oct 29, 2021

nIGHTmAYOR said:
If you came across a device that is Windows 10 approved and its driver fail to install , can you please provide information about it so I can inspect it ? I need to analyze one of those .

@nIGHTmAYOR

Hi there
screen shot -- for example device shown -- I haven't got a specific problem with this device but just an example of where to get vendor info so you can google on it for more details

Cheers
jimbo

TigerTom · Oct 29, 2021

nIGHTmAYOR said:
CountMike said:

"Catalog drivers" ie Drivers from MS driver catalog.

Click to expand...

Device Manager > Right click it > Uninstall

I think I just misinterpreted the term "Catalog driver" as a specific driver for catalogs (?) . Now it's clear it is just another word for the generic MS drivers. Thx!