First: is your Windows 32-bit or 64-bit?
This takes about twenty seconds and saves you downloading the wrong file:
- Press Windows key + I to open Settings.
- Go to System › About.
- Under "Device specifications", look at the line labelled "System type".
- It will say either "32-bit operating system" or "64-bit operating system".
What is the actual difference?
64-bit Windows can address more than 4 GB of RAM and is standard on any reasonably modern machine. 32-bit Windows appears on older or low-memory systems. For drivers the practical consequence is simple: a 32-bit version of Windows can only run 32-bit or universal installers.
If you accidentally launch a 64-bit-only installer on 32-bit Windows, it will either refuse to open or throw an error. That is not a corrupted download — it is an architecture mismatch, and the fix is just to grab the universal package instead.
Windows 10 support is ending — does that matter?
Microsoft has ended mainstream support for Windows 10. Your existing driver will keep working, so there is no immediate problem. But security patches and new driver updates now flow to Windows 11, so if your hardware allows it, upgrading is the better long-term position. Note that Windows 11 is 64-bit only, so a 32-bit machine cannot make that jump.