Scott Hanselman

I had a hard drive die recently so I decided to do a full fresh reinstall of Windows, this time a fresh Windows 11 from a downloaded ISO burned to a USB stick.

It was a solid install and everything worked out of the box. I used it for a few days and had no issues, but while poking around I noticed in the Device Manager that there were dozens of Base System Devices that were banged out. Like a TON.

I'd like to get that fixed, so I went to Windows Update but WU said everything was cool.

Since a lot of stuff moved and was redesigned in Windows 11 I went looking for "Windows Update Optional Updates" and it took me a while to find it, even though it's listed right there on Windows Update in Settings.

Click on Advanced Options. Here you can control things like your Windows Update active hours so it doesn't reboot when you don't want it, etc.

Here you'll see a bunch of Optional Updates. I had like 33 of them.

Here's what it looks like when you have a bunch of updates pending. These are Chipset and Motherboard updates.

I did have to select each of these checkboxes and select Install at the end, but once they were done, I had no banged out (yellow exclamation point) devices in Device Manager.

Hope this helps!

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About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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