Update Driver Button - Greyed out in 1 place but not another

[EntropyMagnet]

Hello,

I work in Tech Support for an instrument company and have had some recent calls that are baffling to me.

All of the behavior I'm describing below is from Win 7 users, Professional or Ultimate and all (so far) have been 64-bit.

Whenever a caller complains about connection issues, I'll have them verify a few things through their "Devices and Printers" screen. Then I ask them to re-load/update the device driver. This means double-clicking on the device, Hardware tab, Properties, Driver tab, Update Driver.

On a large amount of callers having troubles, the "Update Driver" button is greyed out and we are not allowed to re-load/update the device driver.

If I take them to Device Manager, Ports, double click on the port# of the device, then Driver tab, the "Update Driver" button is *not* greyed out. We then can attempt to re-load/update the driver as we see fit.

Unfortunately, re-loading/updating does not always fix the problem with people who have this type of condition present in their computer. It is interesting that computers that do allow driver re-loading/updating through Device and Printers have a much higher success rate.

So now I'm trying to determine why some computers are this way.

This brings up a few questions:

Why is "Update Driver" not accessible through the Devices and Printers but it is through Device Manager?

I realize that some IT departments may have these computers constrained in some ways.

Can someone shed some light on how an IT dept can affect this particular behavior?

Is there some setting I can have the caller check to see if IT is limiting this?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Guy

 

[ComputerGeek]

Interesting question... So i had a look on my own machine which is OEM license Win 7 Pro x86.. If I go to the Driver tab via Devices and Printers (as you describe) Update Driver is greyed out for every device i tried via that route.

So I don't know why it works that way but seems normal behavior.. it's just another mystery of Windows!r. Guess Device Manager is the best way to get there