How to identify direct URL for Windows Update driver in Windows 11/10

With so many Windows Updates happening in the background, you never really know which webpage URL is a source of your PC’s last driver update. Knowing direct URLs can be particularly useful if you want to have manual control of driver updates or after a reboot of your PC.

Identify direct URL for Windows Update driver

Here is a method through which you can identify a direct URL for a Windows Update driver in Windows 11/10. This method involves the following steps as follows:

1. Stopping Windows update service
2. Cleaning up the local Windows Update cache
3. Removing driver for a particular device
4. Restarting Windows update service
5. Installing latest available driver
6. Inspecting logs to identify direct URL

1] Stopping Windows Update service

Using admin command prompt, execute the command “net stop wuauserv”. This will stop the Windows Update service.

2] Cleaning up the local Windows Update cache

To clean up the local Windows Update cache, use admin cmd, and execute the following commands, one after the other:

del /s /q %windir%\SoftwareDistribution\*.*

del /s /q %windir%\Logs\Windows Update\*.etl

3] Removing the driver from a particular device

This step involves uninstalling a particular device driver. Follow these steps,

• Start – Device Manager
• Open Display adapters
• Right-click on the device
• Click Uninstall.

• At the prompt, ensure that “Delete the driver software for this device” is checked.
• Click OK
• Wait until the driver is uninstalled
• On the Action menu click “scan for hardware changes.”
• The device now comes up with a Yellow-mark over it indicating a driver could not be found. If an older driver was found and installed, you can uninstall that too and repeat until the only basic drive is left.

4] Restarting Windows Update service

With the driver successfully uninstalled, now restart Windows Update service using admin cmd-prompt. Execute “net start wuauserv”.

5] Installing the latest available driver

Follow these steps to install the latest available drivers for a device whose drivers were uninstalled in Step 3.

• Start – Device Manager
• Right-click on the device and click “Update Driver software.”
• Click “Search automatically for updated driver software.”
• Wait for the driver update to complete

6] Inspecting logs to identify direct URL

To identify the direct URL for a Windows Update driver you have to browse through logs in the Windows directory. Follow these steps:

Open Windows > logs > WindowsUpdate folder.

Open the .etl file in Notepad (if there is more than one log, open the larger one)

Search for “. c a b” and find the last match in the file.

Remove spaces from the string to get the URL of the .cab file.

Remove the regional datacenter prefix “au.ds”: You will get for example the URL:

http://download.windowsupdate.com/d/msdownload/update/driver/drvs/ 2021/10/342005630_d9k19222b456b4dd6ed5863f790565c2638d0t53.cab

This is the direct download to your device driver

Source: MSDN blogs – KB3036646.