Read NOTEs at bottom before you start.
If you Installed and reinstalled device drivers, it’s possibly not working just like you expected or has an unknown quirk. Then you may want to check and see if your old drivers actually got removed. Device manager will not show them.
To check and see if you have
extra drivers from re-installs present on your hardware; you must set a flag for device manager from the CMD box. In the Search window, type Command Prompt and right click on Run as administrator. Now type in this
FLAG/CMD:((do not type the FLAG/CMD:) “set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1” (no quotes)
Next type ”devmgmt.msc “ (as administrator)
Once you are in Device Manager, go to the "View" menu, select “Show Hidden Devices”. This will show all the device drivers including things that aren’t currently installed in your computer.
You can right-click on the driver and then choose Uninstall from the menu to remove the drivers for that old hardware.
This procedure can resolve a lot of weird issues, and even increase performance on some machines where you’ve upgraded drivers a ton of times.
NOTE: the
grayed out drivers may OR may Not still be needed. Before deleting make sure they are not for some non-active devices (like USBs or some parts of media player).
