What Does It Mean If A Driver Is Digitally Signed?
A software driver digitally signed means that the vendor who developed the software driver has signed its integrity to be in adherence to standard and requirements of the accepting Operating System such Microsoft Windows. Once signed, it means that the software was not tampered nor altered by any means other that what the Signing Authority has allowed and therefore the user gets secured that the driver is authentic and safe to be installed.
Why Does Windows Block My Installation Of Unsigned Driver
By default Windows 8 & 10 is set to block the installation of any driver without digital signature for security purposes. This is noticeable when you try to install such and your computer prompts similar window display as below:
The prompt above tells the user that the driver is potentially unsafe since it was not digitally signed and the source was unknown to Microsoft. This way, Microsoft can protect Windows users from any pirated, tampered or modified drivers which can be potentially harmful to our computer if not verified.
Usually all verified and genuine drivers are digitally signed. However, not all digitally unsigned drivers pose a risk to our computer. And there are cases wherein we need to install drivers which are not digitally signed. These drivers are those which were too old, discontinued by its developers or drivers which we developed for our personal use. And if you strongly believe that the driver you are going to install comes from a trusted third-party developer or vendor, you can still install that said driver even it has no digital signature from its vendor. This is done by disabling the digital signature enforcement of Windows prior to normal installation. And you can simply to do that on your own by following the steps below:
How To Disable Driver Signature Enforcement (To Install Drivers Without Digital Signatures)
To install your digitally unsigned driver, first, you need to open your Settings App. This is done by clicking the Windows logo at the lower left corner of the screen as shown below. Then click the Settings Icon.
Once you are on the settings panel, select the Update & Security tab as boxed in yellow below:
Next, on the left pane, select and click Recovery tab.
Under Advanced starup pane, click Restart now button as shown below:
The PC will then try to restart. When the screen prompts as shown below, choose Troubleshoot:
On the next screen, choose and click Advanced options.
On the next screen, choose and click Startup Settings:
On the Startup Settings page, just click the Restart button to restart your PC into Startup Settings screen:
Then on the next page, press the key number “7” or Function key “F7” in your keyboard to select Disable Driver Signature Enforcement.
As soon as you press the key, the PC then will restart. And Voila, once you logged in, you can now start to install your driver without encountering any error prompt regarding the digital signature issue. Once you finished installing the said driver, just simply restart your PC to bring the Driver Signature Enforcement back to enable option automatically. And once it has restarted, you cannot install another unsigned driver unless you start to go through the whole process stated above again.
Final Thoughts
As set by default in Windows, it is really unsafe to install drivers which are not digitally signed. If you are not sure that the driver came from a trusted source, then don’t try to install it if not even necessary. You should only install drivers you trust. If you badly need drivers for your hardware, just find it on the official website of its vendors to get the signed drivers instead. Else you can try this tweak at your own risk.
(By the way I did this to install my own-developed software driver for LabVIEW instrument hardware).
