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How to Find the Driver for a Device in a Batch Script

Knowing which specific driver a piece of hardware is using is a critical task for system diagnostics, troubleshooting, and automated driver installations. You might need to verify that a device is using the correct corporate-approved driver, get the driver version to check if an update is needed, or identify the driver file (.sys) associated with a problematic device.

This guide will teach you how to get detailed driver information using the powerful, built-in driverquery.exe and WMIC command-line utilities. You will learn how to list all drivers and how to filter that list to find the specific driver associated with your hardware.

danger

CRITICAL NOTE: Querying detailed system and hardware information is a privileged operation. For the most complete and accurate results, your script must be run with full administrator privileges.

The Challenge: Linking a Device to a Driver​

The Windows Device Manager GUI makes it easy to see a device's properties and its associated driver. To do this from a script, we need a command that can query the same underlying system information. While you can use devcon.exe from the Windows Driver Kit, there are powerful tools already built into Windows.

The driverquery.exe utility is the standard, built-in tool for listing all installed device drivers and their properties. It is simple, fast, and provides the information in several script-friendly formats.

Command: driverquery /FO CSV

  • /FO CSV: Formats the Output as CSV (Comma-Separated Values), which is the easiest format to parse in a script.

This produces a detailed list of every driver on the system as output:

"Module Name","Display Name","Description","Driver Type","..."
"amdgpio2","amd_gpio2 Controller","amd_gpio2 Controller","Kernel",...
"amdgpio3","AMD GPIO Controller","AMD GPIO Controller","Kernel",...
"amdpcidev","AMD PCI Root Bus Lower Filter","AMD PCI Root Bus Lower Filter","Kernel",...
"hidusb","Microsoft USB HID Class Driver","HID-compliant mouse","Kernel",...
...

Our goal is to search this list for our target device.

Method 2 (More Advanced): Using WMIC​

The WMIC utility can also achieve this by linking two different WMI classes: one for the device and one for the driver. This is more complex but can be more powerful for very specific queries.

Command: wmic path Win32_SystemDriver where "Name='amdgpio2'" get PathName

This is less intuitive than driverquery for general-purpose listing.

Basic Example: Listing All Drivers​

This script uses the recommended driverquery command to create a CSV report of all drivers on the system.

@ECHO OFF
SET "ReportFile=%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\Driver_List.csv"

ECHO --- Listing All Installed Drivers ---
ECHO Generating report. This may take a moment...
ECHO Report will be saved to: "%ReportFile%"

driverquery /FO CSV > "%ReportFile%"

ECHO.
ECHO [SUCCESS] Report created.

Parsing the Output to Find a Specific Driver​

The most common task is to find the driver for a specific device. You can do this by filtering the output of driverquery with findstr.

Let's find the driver for our network card, which we know is an "Intel(R) Ethernet" device.

@ECHO OFF
SET "DeviceName=Intel(R) Ethernet"

ECHO --- Finding driver for: %DeviceName% ---
ECHO.

REM The /SI switch makes the query "System Information" style, often cleaner.
REM We pipe the output to findstr to get the line for our device.
driverquery /SI | findstr /I "%DeviceName%"

Output:

Intel(R) Ethernet Controller (3) I225-V       e2fexpress     Kernel

This tells us that the "Intel(R) Ethernet Controller" is using the e2fexpress driver.

Common Pitfalls and How to Solve Them​

  • Administrator Rights: For a complete list of all drivers, especially low-level kernel and system drivers, you must run the script as an Administrator.

  • Finding the Right "Device Name": The name you search for needs to match the "Display Name" or "Description" field in the driverquery output. These are the same names you see in Device Manager. A generic search for "USB" will return dozens of results.

    • Solution: Be as specific as possible with your findstr search string. It's often helpful to run a full driverquery > drivers.txt first, and then search that file in Notepad to find the exact name of the device you are interested in.

  • Getting the .sys File Path: The driverquery /V (Verbose) switch will show you the full path to the driver's .sys file on the disk, which is essential for advanced diagnostics.

    driverquery /V /FO CSV | findstr /I "e2fexpress"

Practical Example: A Network Card Driver Audit Script​

This script gets the specific driver name and version for the primary network adapter. This is a common task in a deployment script to verify that a machine has the correct, corporate-approved network driver.

@ECHO OFF
SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION
ECHO --- Network Driver Audit ---
ECHO.

REM --- Step 1: Find the name of the primary active network adapter ---
SET "AdapterName="
FOR /F "tokens=4,*" %%A IN ('netsh interface show interface ^| find "Connected"') DO (
    SET "AdapterName=%%B"
)
IF NOT DEFINED AdapterName (ECHO No active adapter found. & GOTO :End)
ECHO Found active adapter: !AdapterName!

REM --- Step 2: Find the driver for that adapter ---
SET "DriverInfo="
FOR /F "tokens=*" %%D IN ('driverquery /SI ^| findstr /I /C:"!AdapterName!"') DO (
    SET "DriverInfo=%%D"
)
ECHO Driver Info: !DriverInfo!

REM --- Step 3: Get the driver's version from its file ---
FOR /F "tokens=1" %%F IN ("!DriverInfo!") DO (
    SET "DriverFile=%%F"
)
FOR /F "tokens=2 delims==" %%V IN ('wmic datafile where "name^="C:\\Windows\\System32\\drivers\\!DriverFile!.sys"" get Version /value') DO (
    SET "DriverVersion=%%V"
)
ECHO Driver Version: !DriverVersion!

:End
ENDLOCAL
note

This is an advanced script that chains multiple commands together to get the final, detailed result.

Conclusion​

The driverquery.exe command is the standard and most effective built-in tool for finding and listing installed device drivers from a batch script.

  • The core command is driverquery. Use it with /FO CSV for the most script-friendly output.
  • Pipe the output to findstr to filter the long list and find the specific device you are interested in.
  • Use the /V switch with driverquery to get verbose details, including the path to the driver's .sys file.
  • Always run your script as an Administrator for a complete and accurate report.

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