Generate a List of Installed Drivers from the Command Line
We’ve already covered how to take a quick look at the list of installed drivers using DriverView, but what if you are on a machine that doesn’t already have that software installed? There’s a command line utility that comes bundled with Windows Vista or XP that gives you similar output.
It’s also useful if you are a command line junkie and have cygwin installed… you can just pipe the command through grep and quickly see exactly what you are looking for.
Running the command with no parameters will give you the default output:
To get verbose output you can use the /v parameter:
driverquery /v
Or to output in list or csv format instead of the default table format, you can use the /FO switch
driverquery /FO [list, table, csv]
So for instance, if you ran the following command to give you verbose information in list format:
driverquery /FO list /v
You should see output similar to this:
If you have cygwin installed you could pipe this through grep, but you should be able to pipe the output into a file, for instance like this:
driveryquery > test.txt
Always useful to know how to use the command line!
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After i type in “driverquery /v” it runs successfully but i cant enter in any more lines after that. (its like my command prompt doesnt respond)
Thank you for sharing, very useful
XP has a grep like util called findstr.exe, very useful when combined with the pipe. For example:
driverquery /v | findstr /i vmware
will show you only vmware drivers for example. There’s also a “show lines that do not match” switch:
driverquery | findstr /iv 8/4/2004
will show you all drivers that do NOT have a link date of 8/4/2004. It’s a fair replacement for grep IMHO.
-T
Hi all,
Even without cygwin installed, you can have the info saved into a textfile.
Just type (in Vista) “driverquery > C:\Users\\Desktop\drivers.txt” (without quotes of course and replace with your own Windows account).
Anyways, thanks for a very useful site with many very handy tweaks and tips! Much appreciated.
Greetings,
Jan
Just to let you know there is a typo on this line:
driveryquery > test.txt
Dont think the extra “y” is correct.
I would have noticed it and not typed but i thought it would be good to change.
I love these tips and how tos.
Thanks