Windows 10: System timer - No drivers are installed for this device

Background

After having issues with recurring BSODs with error FAULTY_HARDWARE_CORRUPTED_PAGE, I took measures according to this page https://www.drivereasy.com/knowledge...ows-10-solved/. Apart from the Driver Easy software I also ran the Driver Booster software (Download Driver Booster - The best free Nvidia, AMD, Intel & Dell driver update software for Windows 7 & above.).

I updated approx. 15 drivers to the latest revisions. However, Driver Booster reports that all drivers are up-to-date, while Driver Easy reports that some drivers are outdated, one of them being the Intel(R) Watchdog Timer Driver (Intel(R) WDT). When viewing the details of this driver in Driver Easy it shows information according to the picture below:





As I understand it these drivers are both related to the System Timer driver in Windows Device Manager - System Devices. Looking at the Properties of System Timer in Device Manager it shows information as follows:






When downloading the Intel(R) Watchdog Timer Driver (Intel(R) WDT) with Driver Easy and trying to update the System Timer driver with the downloaded driver, Windows Update Driver reports that the best driver for this device is already installed, see pics below:







Questions

Why is Device manager reporting "No drivers are installed" while at the same time reporting Driver details of the driver installed, such as Driver version 10.0.15063.0? Is the driver installed or not???

Why is Driver Easy reporting that the driver needs to be updated, and providing a newer version, while Windows reports that the best driver available is already installed?


Any ideas that could bring some light upon these mysteries are much appreciated. Thanks!

:)

 

No drivers are installed for this device.

I would think it is an anomaly that Device Manager is reporting that there are no drivers loaded for your printer.

Since your printer is working normally, there has to be drivers loaded, otherwise Windows applications would not see the printer and Windows would not be able to figure out how to send data to the printer . . .

 

No drivers are installed for this device.

yes I got them from official web site , also I found in device manger network adapters event{ requires further installation} I installed the creators update on 7/04/2017 do you think I need to reinstall it again..

 

We never recommend the routine use of driver updating tools. Please feel free to search the forum for threads stating that.

- because that's the way these tools often work. They use different databases. Updating drivers can actually introduce problems for a few- there are quite a few threads where people having upgraded to the Creator's Build, find a certain driver has been updated (by MS) and they need to revert.
Yes, MS's database doesn't always get it right- for a few people.

System Timer: maybe a field with the base build number of the OS has been filled in without there being an actual driver- I don't know.

 

Thanks for the warnings! I'll be more careful when using these tools in the future.

 

I'm with @dalchina There "might" actually be a good legitimate one out there. There are so many bad ones though, good luck finding a reputable one. IMHO, its just not worth the hassle. Most exaggerate how many drivers are out of date. Some even install the wrong ones. And almost all of the free ones will eventually ask for money to actually download and install what they call updated drivers. Add to that, that most come bundled with other payloads you won't want, and some go so far as to make it a PITA to uninstall them when you finally clue in that's its snake oil. Buyer beware, IMHO.

 

Being a curious geek I read somewhere online that the watchdog timer driver is installed together with Intel XTU. I went on to check out XTU and installed it. After playing around with XTU for a while I ran a new scan with Driver Easy and discovered that it didn't complain about the "Motherboard resources"/"Intel Timer Watchdog Driver" issue anymore. Instead both the drivers seem to be installed now:





However, I still can't find the Watchdog Timer Driver anywhere in Windows Device Manager. I checked to see if I could find something regarding a watchdog timer in my BIOS settings but couldn't find anything. I checked out an interesting discussion on watchdog timers here: https://software.intel.com/en-us/for...t/topic/700408. However the discussion is a bit above my level of understanding. Is there perhaps no support for this in Windows, only in Linux?

Some useful papers I found:

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/ww...r-app-note.pdf
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/wind.../gg463320.aspx

 

It's interesting that scan reports the System Timer as up to date...

Out of curiosity I ran DriverMax on mine (2 free/day / commercial) - I have used this 3 or 4 times over the years to find an odd driver not found in the normal way, and for that it has indeed been useful.

Of the updates it listed, none were timer related. But of course, the hardware is quite different.

However, Driver Easy produces a different list, including

 

I've executed a couple of scans now with some different driver tools: Driver Easy, Driver Booster, DriverMax and SlimDrivers. They all give different results on which drivers that are out-of-date. I have learned not to trust everything these tools detect. For instance DriverMax reports that my Dual Band Wireless driver is out-of-date:



However, checking with the download pages at Intel shows that I have the latest version: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/dow...?product=75439 .

I feel rather comfortable now with the drivers I have installed so I'll just wait and see if there will pop up any more BSODs. Thanks for all the help!

 

Good lesson learnt.. hope all goes well.

 

Thanks, dalchina! I've now moved on to some more fun with VirtualBox, Windows XP and an old workshop information system for my car. The WIS doesn't run under 64 bit Windows 10 for some reason. I guess it only works for 32-bit Windows systems. Quite fun to run the old XP again *Tongue

 

I just want to post a warning regarding SlimDrivers, which I downloaded from http://download.cnet.com/SlimDrivers...-75279940.html. My computer was infected with a plethora of malware, most of them related to SlimDrivers, something I detected today when performing a scan with Malwarebytes, an anti-malware software. One more lesson learned.

 

Watch out. I installed this AMD driver I don't have a AMD machine and my computer would not reboot until I did a system restore. Also the other one creative breaks my front panel sound from working.



Best thing is to not break what is not broken there is no benefit to always update your drivers if they are working fine.