Did you get the feeling that your WSUS was not downloading all the drivers that your clients needed? Well, let me tell you if you have that feeling probably you are right. WSUS does not automatically recognize or download all the drivers needed for all devices.

Why is this happening? Because by default WSUS only receives and distributes drivers that are digitally signed by Microsoft (meaning that the driver was fully and properly tested by Microsoft).

I’ve recently had several problems with machines that are part of my domain, like the newer IBM ThinkPad T60 and T61 models with Vista installations. Some of their drivers were missing and I had to use IBM official site to download them because WSUS did not recognize any updates on that machines.

But you actually don’t have to worry, within a few steps you can configure your WSUS to import all the drivers that you are requiring by your clients. The only thing that must be clear to you first is the model of each device you need to update the driver (you can easily find out all the details by accessing the manufacturer’s official site, like IBM Lenovo downloads and support site).

Here are the steps:

1 – Open your WSUS console and access “Action” and select “Import Updates”.

The Microsoft Update Catalog site will appear

2 – Insert the model of the device that you need to update the driver. For example: “Mobile Intel 965 Express”. A list with all the drivers for that device will appear and ordered by release date.

3 – See for the latest drivers according to your product and select “Add”.

4 – Do that for all the drivers you need and when you finish go to the basket option.

You will see a summary of all the updates you’ve selected

5 – Leave checked the option “Import directly to Windows Server Update Services” and select “Import”.

Now all the drivers’ updates that you selected will be importing to your WSUS.

6 – When this procedure finishes, the clients’ machines will need to inform about their updates status again. So, from a client machine that needs any driver that you’ve just imported, access the cmd and enter “wuauclt /reportnow /detectnow”.

It may take several minutes to the clients’ machines to inform about the status of the updates that are required.

7 – From your WSUS console check on the client’s updates status and you will find all the new updates that can apply to this machine.

You can now approve them and distribute to your test or users machines.

Hope you find it useful!

Cheers!