Uninstall drivers for devices you no longer use

By default, Device Manager doesn't show devices that aren't connected to your computer, even if the drivers for those devices are installed and loaded.But why would you want to do this?

When you disconnect or remove a device from your system without first right-clicking its entry in Device Manager and selecting Uninstall, its driver will remain installed on your system. The only way to remove it is to either reattach the device, or show hidden devices.

Now, in Device Manager, you can select Show hidden devices from the View menu, but all this will add to the listing are non-PnP devices. To have Device Manager show all hidden devices, follow these steps:

1) Open the System page in Control Panel, and then click the Advanced system settings link on the left.

2) Click the Environment Variables button.

3) In the lower System variables section, click New.

4) Type devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices for the Variable name, and enter 1 for the Variable value. Click OK when you're done, and click OK to close the System Properties window.

5) If Device Manager is open, close and reopen it.

6) In Device Manager, select Show hidden devices from the View menu.

Hidden devices (sometimes called ghosted devices) now appear in Device Manager with grayed-out icons. Other than the fact that they represent non present hardware, these hidden entries should behave normally, in that you can uninstall them, change their properties, or update their drivers.

Tags: environment variables,drivers

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