How to Download and Install Motherboard Drivers
This article explains how to download and install motherboard drivers, and how to figure out which drivers you need.
Author:Daniel BarrettAug 03, 202231444 Shares551649 Views
Assuming that you’re planning to assemble a new PCor fix your PC, you will need to install motherboard drivers. This article includes guidelines for installing motherboard drivers, including how to figure out which drivers you need and how to find and download the drivers.
Figure out What Motherboard Drivers You Need
The motherboard in your computer is unique to the make and model of your PC. Thus, the best way to know which drivers you want is to figure out the brand and model number of the motherboard inside your PC.
- Select the Start menu and type System. Select the System Information app.
- Select System Summary from the tree in the left sheet.
- Search for the three snippets of data in the right pane that begin with BaseBoard. This includes the Manufacturer, Product code, and Version of your motherboard. Note these for later.
If you are just keen on installing motherboard drivers for specific components, select Components from the tree in the left pane. You can select components like Sound Device or Display to see driver information for those devices. Look for Driver in the Item field. The information in the Value field contains the path and name of the driver file.
The Name and Manufacturer fields will provide you with which company manufactured the component. With this information and the driver file’s name, you can locate the latest driver on the manufacturer’s website.
How to Download Motherboard Drivers
Open your favorite search tool, type your motherboard’s make and model, and add “drivers.” You will get a couple of results here; however, search for ones from the official site of your motherboard. For instance, if your motherboard comes from MSI, get your drivers from the MSI site.
There may be multiple results from the same website, and it can get confusing. To find the correct one, you need to read the description of the drivers and find the one that is the most recent, says “drivers,” and says “utility.”
From there, the download steps are straightforward:
- Click on the link from the search results.
- Click on the “Drivers” tab of the website (all major manufacturers have this tab, including Biostar, ASUS, Gigabyte, ASRock, ACER, and MSI).
- Select the appropriate operating systemthat runs on your computer.
- You will see a rundown of the drivers available for your computer. Pick what you need and click “Download.”
The drivers automatically start to download. Save them to your local drive, on a USB drive, or somewhere you will easily find them.
How to Install the Drivers
Once you have downloaded the drivers to a folder, you’re ready to install them. Find where you downloaded the driver file. This is commonly an EXE file, in which case you can open it. Or it could be a ZIP file, which you can extract the driver files from.
Go to the folder where your drivers were downloaded and unzip them. Do this by selecting “Extract Here,” It will unzip into the current directory.
Go to the folder where you extracted the driver files. You should see an EXE file there. Right-click it and select Run as Administrator.
This will launch the driver installation wizard. Since the driver is already installed on your computer, you’ll see several installation options. Choosing either Modify or Repair will update the driver on your system.
Once the motherboard driver update is done, you’ll see a Finish button to move to the last step.
You’ll see an option to restart your computer. You select this as soon as possible, so the changes take effect. Select Finish to restart your computer.
Once you have restarted your computer, installing motherboard drivers is complete.
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Daniel Barrett
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