How to Use Intel® Driver & Support Assistant (Intel® DSA)

Installing Intel® Driver & Support Assistant (Intel® DSA)

1. Download the utility to your system.
2. Run the setup program by double-clicking Intel® Driver & Support Assistant Installer.exe.
3. Read and agree to the license terms and conditions.
4. Select Install.
5. Click the Launch button. The tray icon starts and automatically opens the default browser.

Running Intel® Driver & Support Assistant

Once the application installation completes, click the tray icon, and choose Check for new drivers. The app can also be started from the Windows Start menu by typing or selecting Intel® Driver & Support Assistant to find and launch by clicking on the icon. 

Downloading and Installing New Drivers and Software 

After launching Intel® Driver & Support Assistant, a new web browser tab will open, and after a brief scan the Intel® DSA dashboard will appear. The dashboard includes several sections: 

1. Available Updates: If there are any driver or software updates available for your system, you will see them listed here. Updates must be downloaded before they can be installed. Choose the Download all option or download individual updates, and then choose Install all or Install individual updates. You can click or tap on the title of any update to see additional details.
2. Messages: This section will only appear if there are important notifications about your system or devices. Click or tap the title of the message to see additional details.
3. This PC: Includes high-level information about your PC, including operating system (OS) and BIOS information.
4. Devices and Drivers: Lists the key components of your system with important details and driver information. Look for the update icons to see which drivers need updating and which are up to date. Click or tap the title of the device to see additional details.
5. Intel Software: This section will only appear if certain Intel software applications are detected on your system. Click or tap on the name of the application to see additional details.

See a history of previously installed updated

After you install your first set of updates, a new tab will appear in the Available Updates section. This Install History section shows a listing of updates you have installed with Intel® DSA (updates installed manually or through Windows* Update will not appear here). Click or tap on the title of the update to see additional details. 

How to hide updates or messages you don’t want to see any more 

There may be instances when your Intel drivers are up to date, but Intel® DSA continues to send a new version notification. Intel® DSA has a feature that allows you the option of hiding or snoozing the notifications for available updates for different periods of time. To see this option, expand the update details by clicking the caret, and then select the Hide just this update checkbox. After you have selected the checkbox, you will have the option to select how long the update should be hidden. 

Changing your Intel® DSA Settings

Intel® DSA offers several options for customization of your experience. Click or tap the Settings option on the right side of Intel® DSA dashboard. 

1. Notifications: Intel® DSA can notify you when new driver and software updates are available for your system. By default, notifications are shown once per day – you can change the frequency of these notifications to weekly, immediate (notifications are shown as soon as a new update is available), or never.
2. Automatic Downloads: Save an extra step and enable Intel® DSA to download any updates so you only need to click the install button.
3. WHQL Certified Updates: Unchecking the box will allow Intel® DSA to provide updates of non-WHQL downloads for Intel Graphics drivers. This box is checked by default to only send updates for WHQL certified.
4. Language: By default, Intel® DSA will match the language selected on your computer. You can manually change to a different language by selecting from this list.
5. Folder Location: By default, Intel® Driver & Support Assistant places downloaded drivers in C:\ProgramData\Intel\DSA\Downloads. 
   To change the location for downloaded drivers:
   1. Run the Intel® DSA scan and choose Settings from the menu on the left side of the screen.
   2. Under Folder Location, choose the blue Change location button.
   3. Choose the new location and click OK to save the change.

      If changing the default folder location, the new folder cannot contain hard links, junction points, or symbolic links. The user also needs to have read/write access to the location. 

6. Intel® Computing Improvement Program (ICIP): ICIP is an opt-in program that Intel offers for our customers to participate in and provide information about their computer's performance to make product improvements that may benefit customers in the future. Learn more about the Intel® Computing Improvement Program.

Uninstalling Intel® Driver & Support Assistant 

If you want to completely remove Intel® DSA from your computer, follow the steps below:

Method 1 

You can remove Intel® DSA from your computer by opening the Add or Remove Programs settings screen in Microsoft Windows* and searching for Intel® Driver & Support Assistant. Select the program tile and then the Uninstall button. Follow the prompts to remove Intel® DSA. For more information, follow the steps in this Microsoft* article: Uninstall or remove apps and programs in Windows. 

Method 2 

If you encounter issues uninstalling or installing Intel® DSA on your computer, you can use Intel® Driver & Support Assistant Uninstaller to completely remove the program from your system. 

1. Download and run Intel® Driver & Support Assistant Uninstaller.
2. Accept the terms & conditions.
3. Click on Next.
4. Click on Close.

If you experience issues installing or uninstalling Intel® DSA after following the steps above, please assist our developers by sending any screenshots of the error and your Intel® DSA log files to Intel. You can send the files to us via an Intel Communities post or by contacting Intel Support. For information about locating your Intel® DSA log files,  follow the steps in this article.