Intune driver updates work best with pilot groups and manual approval

Driver and firmware updates tend to be an afterthought, right up to the moment a bad update or a missed fix takes out an important device. In most tenants I work with, driver maintenance is a weak spot. It's done by hand, it's inconsistent, and it produces surprises. Intune driver updates finally put this under the admin's control, but you need to understand how they work and what you give up.

Intune driver updates depend on device requirements and a first profile

You start in the Microsoft Intune admin center → Devices → Windows → Driver updates. The feature requires Windows 10/11 Pro, Enterprise or Education with the right Intune licence, and devices must be Entra joined or hybrid joined. The requirement people miss most often is Windows diagnostic data, which has to be enabled at Basic level or higher. Without it, devices simply don't show up for driver management. The Microsoft Learn overview lists the requirements in detail.

Next you create a profile. Click "Create profile" and choose the approval model, automatic or manual. Most organisations I see begin with a small pilot group mapped through Entra ID groups instead of rolling out broadly. The real decision is whether Microsoft auto-approves recommended drivers for your devices or whether you review and approve every update yourself. Either choice has consequences you'll feel later.

Automatic and manual approval behave differently in practice

Automatic approval is convenient, and it carries risk. Microsoft's recommendations hold up well on standard hardware, but a well-intentioned update can still break a niche peripheral or a specialist device. Manual approval gives you detailed visibility in the Intune portal. Every pending driver and firmware update is listed with its version, release notes and classification, and you can approve, defer or pause it. I find that especially useful for pilot groups and for devices that run critical workloads.

If you want, you can set a deferral period of up to 30 days before updates reach production groups, which gives your pilot time to surface problems. If Windows Autopatch is also in use, be clear about what Autopatch manages and what your Intune update profiles manage. Autopatch driver management follows its own logic, based on Microsoft's recommendations, and mixing the two produces conflicting results unless your targeting is strict.

This diagram shows the usual update flow with Intune driver update profiles:

flowchart TD
    A["New drivers published by Microsoft"] --> B["Intune detects available updates"]
    B --> C["Admin reviews in Intune portal"]
    C --> D["Manual approval or automatic install"]
    D --> E["Device installs update after deferral"]
    E --> F["Monitoring & reporting"]

Figure: How driver updates flow through Intune profiles.

The Microsoft Update Catalog should replace OEM update tools

Dell, HP, Lenovo and most other vendors ship their own tools for driver and firmware updates, and those tools often stay on the device after you move to Intune. You end up with two update engines running side by side, version conflicts and the occasional unexpected rollback. Microsoft's guidance is now unambiguous. If you use Intune driver updates, remove the OEM update tools from managed devices and standardise on the Microsoft Update Catalog. You get a narrower selection of drivers, but updates become more predictable and reporting improves.

In my rollout scripts for Autopilot, I routinely uninstall OEM update utilities (like Dell Command Update) via PowerShell as part of device provisioning. This avoids confusion and conflicting updates.

There are edge cases, such as BIOS updates that only come through the OEM tool. Exclude those devices from the Intune update profile or give them a separate profile with manual controls. In my experience, trying to run both approaches at once never ends well.

Reporting shows failures and lets you pause problematic updates

The driver update reporting in Intune does its job. Per device, you can see which updates are pending, installed or failed, and I always check the status after a rollout so failures don't go unnoticed. When troubleshooting, open the device in Intune and look at the update history pane, where install errors and status codes are logged clearly. Rolling back a driver has to happen locally, because Intune currently has no bulk rollback.

When a specific update causes trouble, you can pause its deployment to the affected groups while you look into it. That has saved me more than once when a printer driver or a firmware update suddenly started misbehaving. The official Microsoft docs describe approving and pausing updates step by step.

Intune driver updates are progress if you bring discipline

Moving driver updates into Intune is a real improvement, provided you commit to one source of truth, and that's the Microsoft Update Catalog. Running OEM tools alongside Intune almost always ends in version chaos. Add Autopatch and a clear device lifecycle (see also Windows Autopilot device preparation: the new profile) and you have consistent, auditable control over driver and firmware updates. With pilot groups, manual approvals and close monitoring, I'm comfortable trusting driver updates across a large fleet. It does take admin discipline, but the payoff is fewer support calls and device health you can actually predict.