In this tutorial we are going to explain the best way to keep your home network up to date. In this sense, although everything works well, it is convenient to keep all the drivers updated correctly, in order to always have the best performance and the maximum possible compatibility. In addition to having correction of previous errors, if we update the drivers of our WiFi card we will be able to connect with the new WPA3 WiFi security protocol. Today in this article we are going to explain how to update the drivers of your Ethernet network card, and also of your Wi-Fi network card.
Update the Ethernet network card in Windows 10
In this tutorial we are going to use the Windows 10 operating system because it is the most widespread. Normally we can receive driver updates through Windows Update, but sometimes, we have to force the update so that the operating system itself checks both locally and through Windows Update, if there is a new driver update.
Keeping the drivers of our Ethernet network card updated is essential for several reasons:
- Card performance is optimized
- Possible failures or errors are solved in certain circumstances
- Possible security flaws in the card driver have been solved
- Compatibility with new versions of the Windows operating system is increased.
Therefore, keeping these drivers up to date is very important. If we want to update our Ethernet network card:
- Start Menu.
- Control Panel.
- Hardware and sound.
- Devices and printers.
- Device administrator.
There we click on «Network adapters» and we click with the right mouse button on our network card. Then the following options will not appear, here what we have to do is click on Update driver .
Next, this screen will appear indicating two options, search for the updated driver automatically, and also manually on the computer. First we select the automatically updated driver option, so that it checks the computer and the Internet for the latest software:
In case you indicate that we already have the most recent driver, it is highly recommended to verify the version of the driver that we are using, to later compare it with the one on the official website of the Ethernet network card manufacturer. To verify the version, we will simply have to click on «Properties»:
Once we have clicked on “Properties”, we go to the controller section and we can see the version of the controller (driver) and also the date, as you can see below:
Sometimes Windows doesn’t always detect the latest version and doesn’t even detect our network card. If we want to install the latest drivers, we must go to the official website of Intel or Realtek (or the network card you have), find the exact model of our Ethernet network card, and download the latest drivers from the official website.
Another way to get the model of our network card is to know the manufacturer and model of our motherboard. If you don’t know your exact model, you can use the HWiNFo program that you can download from here . In our case we have opted for the portable or portable option, because we did not want any installation. These are the results I have obtained:
From here I get that my board is a Gigabyte Z370P D3 . If I go to the manufacturer’s website, I look for my model, and I go to support in the LAN section, I can download the drivers for my network card.
If the download of the drivers incorporates an executable .exe, we must execute this executable to proceed with the installation of the new drivers, if it does not have an executable, then we will have to install the drivers manually by selecting the option “Browse my PC for controllers »:
Once we have clicked on this second option, we must find the folder where we have downloaded the drivers, and click on «Next». The operating system will automatically recognize that these drivers are more current than the previous ones, and will use them from now on.
In this way, we can install the latest version of drivers, downloaded directly from the official website of the manufacturer of the motherboard that integrates the network card, or directly from the official website of the manufacturer of the network card.
Install the latest drivers on your WiFi card with Windows 10
If updating an Ethernet network card is very important for all the reasons that we have given you previously, updating a WiFi network card is much more important, because with the latest drivers for our WiFi card we can have the WPA3 security protocol . To be able to safely connect to a router with the WPA3 protocol activated, we need to have the latest versions of Windows 10 , and also the latest versions of drivers for our wireless network card , otherwise we will not be able to connect with this protocol.
If you have a WiFi network card on your desktop or laptop, it is very common for it to come from the Intel manufacturer. Intel is one of the manufacturers that has more WiFi cards in laptops and desktop computers integrated into the board, in addition, many other manufacturers such as ASUS or QNAP, launch PCIe WiFi cards using internally the chipset of an Intel card, because they are the ones that they perform better, both in terms of performance (speed and coverage), as well as reliability and compatibility with multiple routers and Wi-Fi access points.
To find out which Wi-Fi network card we have, we simply have to go to “Device Manager”, just below the ethernet network card, we have “Intel WiFi 6 AX200”, that is, our WiFi card model is the Intel AX200 .
Once we know the model of the wireless network card, we go to the official Intel download website, or the website of the manufacturer in question, look for the card model and download the latest available drivers. Once downloaded, we may have an executable .exe inside, we execute it and follow the installation wizard to update the drivers.
In the event that it does not have an installer, we will have to install it manually as we have done previously, selecting the option “Browse my PC in search of drivers”, we look for the folder where we have downloaded the drivers, click on next and automatically Windows you will recognize that we have some new drivers.
If everything has gone well when updating the drivers, now the new version that we have just installed with a recent driver date should appear in the “Driver” section:
As you have seen, updating an Ethernet or WiFi network card is really simple. At first it is advisable to perform an automatic update through Windows, but if there is a newer version on the manufacturer’s website, it is much better to use the latter because we will have a higher version with new features.