windows-driver-store.md

Windows Driver Store

Windows 10 has a concept of the Driver Store. It is a write-protected directory where Windows keeps many drivers it has sourced from… wherever, because… reasons.

The Driver Store is located at:

C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository

I learned about it during the first attempt to enable the Windows 10 Core Isolation feature. There was a handful of drivers, most likely left-overs from my experiments with the embedded systems, which were not even loaded by Windows, but whose mere presence in the Driver Store would not let Windows enable Core Isolation.

• To list the drivers in the Driver Store, use driverquery.
• To remove a driver from the Driver Store, dism is used.

References:

• Where does Windows 10 Store Device Drivers
• How to see and Export All Installed Windows 10 Drivers
• Cleaning Up Driver Store