Removing display device driver

I wanted to pass this along in case anyone has a problem removing a device from the Device Manager, or if you suspect a corrupted Driver that you want to remove in its entirety.

I know it is kinda lengthy and very basic in its format, but I figured I would just drop to the basics and make it easy to follow. I know most of you might just skip through it for the most important steps, but hey, I like to be thorough. If you are not comfortable doing this, please do not attempt this process. Please, make sure that you are doing this for the proper device installed on YOUR system, as this is only an example.

This device was in a laptop, so it was not needed to actually remove the device. So as long as you do your "due diligence" in documentation before you start, you should have a little bit less to go through.

Part of that "due diligence" might also involve taking backups and creating a "recovery" disk - depends on what you are removing. Keep in mind, less complex Devices aren't quite as hard to remove, as there is less configuration information in the Registry, as well as installed apps and less Driver files.

This will ensure that the needed files won't be in memory next boot up, can be deleted after the upcoming reboot. If there is a problem down the road, these can always be enabled again You can even go as far as to use the freeware ShellExView available from here , to remove any Shell Extensions, related to your Device.

Next, remove any other Devices form the hardware category that you are dealing with, just in case they are interfering with YOUR device. First of all, you need to go into the device properties, and get the Driver details. SYS, and. DLL files and in some cases. EXE files from that window. Those will need to be removed manually later on once the Device is removed. Now, move on to the Details Tab in the device properties, and we will need to get the Device Instance ID, and the Service entry, if there is any listed.

For the Device instance ID, it will be a long string of alpha numeric digits, broken into sections. Hit the drop down menu, to select the Service as well. Skip to main content. This browser is no longer supported. Download Microsoft Edge More info.

Contents Exit focus mode. Please rate your experience Yes No. Although the device removal procedure is quite simple, Device Remover is a powerful tool so other functions need to be handled with care. I liked the process of considering each item to remove not to remove. Congrats for a great utility!

USBDeview is more to my liking. I had over a hundred ghosts and It was a pain to select all the ghosts except a few which i will be using later on for removal. But yes it does a little extra by showing us the ghosted services too.

Thanks for all of your significant work. The portable devices section will probably have quite a few entries with phones, mp3 players etc. If you recognize the device or drive letter it uses, add that device only, make sure nothing else is selected for removal and try it. The worst that can happen is the device will be re-detected when you reboot. Currently adding by class will enable all of them as will adding by device or wildcard.

Is this what you mean? Also as I have suggested on their site it would be nice to be able to order the devices by clicking on the top of the columns, thereby putting the ghosted devices together, rather than have to scroll down to find them.

Dave: I think my point sort of falls inbetween your request to the developer of sorting by column or being able to right click and add by description.

I lately bought a game for my gaming laptop, and it didn't appear correctly, so I contacted the distributing company. At this point, all we can suggest is that you try to uninstall and reinstall completely your graphics drivers. At least once a day my screen freezes for several seconds, and then keeps on working, but I get a notification that my graphic card stopped working and has restart.

This happens even if the computer is at minimal effort - for no apparent reason. As I'm not an expert at all in this type of things, could anyone describe to the most insignificant details, please for me the process I have to go through to uninstall and reinstall my graphic drivers? Also, what precautions should I take before I head down that road? This thread is locked. You can follow the question or vote as helpful, but you cannot reply to this thread.