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How Do I Find a Driver's Version Number?

Use Device Manager to find the version of an installed driver in Windows

By Tim Fisher Tim Fisher Senior Vice President & Group General Manager, Tech & Sustainability Emporia State University Tim Fisher has more than 30 years' of professional technology experience. He's been writing about tech for more than two decades and serves as the VP and General Manager of Lifewire. lifewire's editorial guidelines Updated on October 10, 2022 Tweet Share Email Tweet Share Email Windows The Ultimate Laptop Buying Guide

What to Know

Search for Device Manager from the search bar, or find it through WIN+X in newer Windows versions.Locate the device, right-click it, and choose Properties.Open the Driver tab to find Driver Version. It's useful to know the version number of a driver when you're about to update a driver or if you're troubleshooting certain kinds of hardware problems. Fortunately, finding a driver's version number is pretty easy, even if you've never worked with drivers or hardware in Windows before.

How to Find a Driver' s Version Number

You can find an installed driver's version number from within Device Manager, along with other published information about the driver. Specific steps may differ based on the operating system version you're running, but the basic process will be the same. See What Version of Windows Do I Have? if you're not sure which of these several versions of Windows is installed on your computer.
Open Device Manager. The easiest way to do this in Windows 11/10/8 is from the Power User Menu (WIN+X keyboard shortcut), or with Control Panel in older versions of Windows. See Tip 4 below for some other methods that might be quicker for some people. Locate the device in Device Manager that you want to see driver information for. You can do this by opening the main categories of devices until you find the right one. For example, if you're trying to find the driver version number for your video card, you'd look in the Display adapters section, or in the Network adapters section for your network card, etc. You can open as many categories as you want until you find the right one. Use the > icon in Windows 11/10/8/7 to open a category of devices. The [+] icon is used in previous versions of Windows. Right-click or tap-and-hold the device when you find it, and choose Properties from that menu. Go into the Driver tab. If you don't see this tab, read Tip 2 below. The version of the driver is displayed next to Driver Version just a few entries down. Be sure to pay attention to the Driver Provider as well. It's possible that the currently installed driver is a default driver (likely from Microsoft) in which case comparing version numbers will be of little value. Go ahead and install the updated manufacturer's driver but only if the new driver was released after the Driver Date listed.

Tips and More Information

Here are some caveats to know about and some alternative ways to locate a driver's version number: Remember to choose correctly between 32-bit and 64-bit drivers when downloading updates for your hardware. The Driver tab is only accessible if you're viewing the properties of a device. In other words, make sure you right-click (or tap-and-hold) on the actual device, not the category that the device is in. For example, if you right-click the Display adapters section and not a device within that section, you'll see just two options: Scan for hardware changes and Properties, and opening the properties window might reveal just one or two tabs and not the one we're after. What you want to do is expand the category as noted above, and then open the properties of the hardware device. From there, you should see the Driver tab and, ultimately, the driver version, driver provider, driver date, etc. If you'd rather, there are programs called driver updaters that exist solely to help determine if a driver needs to be updated or not. They also usually show the version of the installed driver and the version of the updated driver that you can install over the old one. See our Free Driver Updater Tools list for more on these helpful programs. The Power User Menu and Control Panel are definitely the more commonly known ways to access Device Manager, but the same program can be opened a couple of other ways, too, like from the command line. Using a different method to open Device Manager might be faster for some people. See the Other Ways to Open Device Manager section in our How to Open Device Manager tutorial if you're interested in opening Device Manager from Command Prompt, the Run dialog box, or via Computer Management in Administrative Tools. Was this page helpful? Thanks for letting us know! Get the Latest Tech News Delivered Every Day Subscribe Tell us why! Other Not enough details Hard to understand Submit More from Lifewire How to Reset All Audio Settings in Windows 11 10 Best Free Driver Updater Tools (October 2022) How Do I Disable a Device in Device Manager in Windows? How to View a Device's Status in Device Manager How to Update Drivers in Windows What Version of Windows Do I Have? How Do I Enable a Device in Device Manager in Windows? Snappy Driver Installer Review (Free Driver Updater) How to Fix Windows 11 Ethernet Driver Problems NVIDIA GeForce Video Card Drivers v517.48 (2022-09-27) How to Access Device Manager From the Command Prompt How to Roll Back a Driver in Windows Driver Talent v8.1.0.2 Review (Free Driver Updater) How to Open Disk Management From Command Prompt How to Fix It When Windows 11 Is Stuck in Airplane Mode Driver Booster v10 Review (A Free Driver Updater) Newsletter Sign Up Newsletter Sign Up Newsletter Sign Up Newsletter Sign Up Newsletter Sign Up By clicking “Accept All Cookies”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. Cookies Settings Accept All Cookies