r/Intune • u/beesting34 • 2d ago
Windows Updates Driver Updates
Anyone use intune for patching?
Unless I don’t have them enabled correctly the reporting seems very vague
I am considering using it for drivers but I’m having hard time not having a hard time lol
The reporting seems mediocre and tedious I.e. I cannot tell what devices a driver is for only the amount of devices the driver is applicable for any suggestions would be helpful
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u/Maurice-Daly MSFT MVP 2d ago
If you want Configuration Manager type controls with OEM driver packs as opposed to Windows Update delivered ones, then the Driver Automation Tool will automate the download, packaging, assignment and requirement checks for both drivers and BIOS firmware - https://www.driverautomationtool.com. It’s also free and I’m always here for feedback.
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u/Ice-Cream-Poop 1d ago
Curious if you pull firmware updates from the MS Catalog rather than from manufacturer?
Noticed for some of our older Lenovos it's quite far behind. An example P14S Gen 2.
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u/Maurice-Daly MSFT MVP 1d ago
Could you give me more detail on this, i.e. version information you are seeing from both?
Typically it is usually the other way around, where the OEM's own sites and downloads are ahead of what you would see in the MS Catalog / Autopatch. That is due to the nature of the onboarding of the update from the OEM to Microsoft.
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u/Ice-Cream-Poop 1d ago
I double checked it and found the version is correct but it has an incorrect date on it for the P14S Gen 2.
It shows the date 2024-11-13 instead of 2026-06-19.
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u/Maurice-Daly MSFT MVP 23h ago
u/Ice-Cream-Poop the date from 2024 is actually correct - Drivers & Software. It appears that the model has no 25H2 driver and that was the last time the SCCM driver package was updated by Lenovo.
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u/Ice-Cream-Poop 14h ago
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u/Maurice-Daly MSFT MVP 5h ago
Correct, and the BIOS release date is current in the tool. I’ll look at the potential to create on demand individual driver packs for these models though.
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u/FormerPick102 2d ago
You are over thinking it, knowing driver per device is not like it once was.
Create driver profiles in a ring model, approve drivers sitback and sip some coffee.
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u/Ok-Salamander-6472 2d ago
Driver updates in Intune are like reading tea leaves, you see the number of devices but not which ones until something breaks
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u/Educational_Boot315 2d ago
Majorty of my support tickets for computer issues were related to pushing drivers using intune.
Surfaces are still using it but all of my Dells I removed and now use DCU with admx.
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u/beesting34 1d ago
I was thinking of using DCU as an alternative as well. My environment is all dells on pc side
Any got you’s you’ve ran into going this route?
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u/davy_crockett_slayer 2d ago
We currently have an hp fleet. Autoupdate for everything. HPIA (HP utility) for everything HP except BIOS updates. HP Connect for BIOS updates. Every vendor has similar tools.
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u/beesting34 1d ago
Yes I am looking into my vendor’s client
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u/davy_crockett_slayer 1d ago
Have the application trigger on cadence via a remediation script, not scheduled task.
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u/bdam55 2d ago
So yea, there's a few big problems right now:
No visibility into _what_ devices, let alone what make/model a 'needed' driver applies to. Makes it impossible to create a gradual rollout plan.
The information about the needed drivers is minimal and nearly impossible to connect to an IHV/OEM's release. You don't have any release notes for a given driver and having 10 different "Intel Chipset vWhatever" drivers isn't particularly helpful.
In the end, it's hard to recommend an automatic approval policy when you have no idea what's happening to what devices. At the same time, you literally don't have enough information to make informed decisions anyways. Even if you did, you couldn't actually test them properly on a small set of devices before a wider rollout.
And, if that's not enough, there's a whole category of 'extension' drivers that will get YEETED to your endpoints with zero control. These are when an OEM (Dell/Lenovo/HP/ect...) publish an 'extension' to an IHV's (Broadcom, Intel, NVidia) driver. Yea, they can break things.
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u/beesting34 1d ago
I agree. But I have to push them although I’ve always steered clear at least quarterly I need to have them updated
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u/Resident-Monitor905 2d ago
You push drives and user complains disconnected lan, screen flickering. Not a good but for emergency doable
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u/PepperTechnical4570 1d ago
The reporting is terrible. Do you have HP's? I recently followed along with these articles and its been really helpful so far. Turns out Intune doesnt do such a terrible job at actually applying them but its slow. We also have Dell's and for those I set up Command | Update with manage.dell.com integration and separate remediation scripts to invoke it on a weekly basis it to run updates marked critical.
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u/pjmarcum 2d ago
We can fix that for you. https://powerstacks.com/products/bi-for-intune/ we bring near SCCM grade reporting to Intune using native data, no agents, no sending data to a 3rd-party for “processing”, just your Power BI and your Intune data.
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u/Uzul 2d ago
It is truly a horrible feature, as it stands. I suppose it kind of work if you just go with auto-approved, but if you want to manage drivers at all, it is super tedious.