Windows 10 May Block Drivers That Are Not Verified

Microsoft unveiled a major change as part of its Patch Tuesday yesterday, indicating some drivers may no longer work.

Apple and Microsoft have both been increasing the security of their operating systems. A big part of that is digitally signing software to verify its authenticity. With the latest Patch Tuesday, however, Microsoft may be taking it a step further, blocking any drivers that aren’t signed.

Microsoft outlines the issue under Known Issues:

When installing a third-party driver, you might receive the error, “Windows can’t verify the publisher of this driver software”. You might also see the error, “No signature was present in the subject” when attempting to view the signature properties using Windows Explorer.

Microsoft goes on to describe the specific issue, as well as what impacted users should do:

This issue occurs when an improperly formatted catalog file is identified during validation by Windows. Starting with this release, Windows will require the validity of DER encoded PKCS#7 content in catalog files. Catalogs files must be signed per section 11.6 of describing DER-encoding for SET OF members in X.690.

If this happens you should contact the driver vendor or device manufacturer (OEM) and ask them for an updated driver to correct the issue.