Keep devices up to date and know where to find legacy drivers
Keeping drivers up to date with Lenovo Vantage
Driver management ensures business continuity for all devices in an environment. Updates provide bug fixes and optimizations to the drivers that built-in components and external peripherals depend on. Lenovo devices come with software software that automatically queries and updates drivers. Idea branded products will have the consumer version Lenovo Vantage. Think branded products come with the more advanced Lenovo Commercial Vantage. Download them from Lenovo's website or from the Microsoft Store.
Although I still recommend Vantage as the de-facto tool to keep Lenovo devices updated, it is burdened with ad-ware, solicitations, and deceptive features such as Lenovo Smart Performance. As an alternative, some administrators prefer the more compact and lightweight Lenovo System Update tool.
Knowing when to update
Although staying up to date is best-practice for most endpoints, there are two sides to this coin. The latest isn't always the greatest and driver updates could backfire in variety of counterproductive ways. Minor setbacks: you've updated audio driver and now your built-in microphone is missing or a driver update restart occurred unexpectedly during a video conference. Critical failures: a BIOS update failed and the device no longer boots, a firmware update triggered BitLocker drive encryption. Test drivers before deploying them to your fleet. Create restore points before updates and perform them during user down time. When it comes to firmware/BIOS updates, always have your BDE keys backed up and tread with caution!
Manually fetching legacy drivers
The latest drivers are available for download as executable files on the front end of Lenovo's website. However, older drivers could be downloaded by manually editing the URL with build IDs found in the readme.
Enter your serial number in Lenovo's PC Support
Select Drivers & Software
Select Manual update
Select the component for the driver needed
Here you can download the latest driver
To download an older driver open the readme
Scroll to VERSION INFORMATION where old Build IDs are found
Replace the Build ID in the URL with the desired driver version and replace txt with exe
IE: The current URL is https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobiles/n35a607w.txt
You want to download Build ID n35a603w
The new URL is https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobiles/n35a603w.exe
Press Enter to send the modified URL request
The old driver will download
