Using Device Manager to Uninstall Devices and Driver Packages

This page describes how to uninstall a device or driver package on Windows 10. Before uninstalling a device, it is recommended that the device is unplugged from the system. If the device is uninstalled before it is unplugged, the operating system may rediscover the device and give it new settings in the time between the uninstall and unplugging the device.

First, open Settings (you can do this using the Windows+I keyboard shortcut) and type Remove. Select Add or remove programs. If the device or driver package that you wish to remove appears in the list of programs, select uninstall.

If your device or driver package does not appear in the list, then the device can be uninstalled via Device Manager. If that device is the only device using the driver package, then the driver package can also be removed via Device Manager. To launch Device Manager, click the Start button, type Device Manager, and press Enter.

Then follow these steps:

1. Click on the View menu and turn on «Show Hidden Devices»
2. Expand the node that represents the type of device that you want to uninstall, right-click the device entry for the device you want to uninstall, and select Uninstall.
3. On the Confirm Device Removal dialog box, if you wish to remove the driver package in addition to uninstalling the device, select the Delete the driver software for this device option. When ready to complete the operation, select OK.

With some devices, if the device is still plugged in when it is uninstalled, the device might continue to function until the system has been restarted.

For more information about uninstalling driver and driver packages, see How Devices and Driver Packages are Uninstalled.

Add and Remove Drivers to an offline Windows Image

You can use DISM to install or remove driver (.inf) files in an offline Windows or WinPE image. You can either add or remove the drivers directly by using the command prompt, or apply an unattended answer file to a mounted .wim, .ffu, .vhd, or .vhdx file.

When you use DISM to install a device driver to an offline image, the device driver is added to the driver store in the offline image. When the image is booted, Plug and Play (PnP) runs and associates the drivers in the store to the corresponding devices on the computer.

To add drivers to a WindowsВ 10 image offline, you must use a technician computer running WindowsВ 10, Windows ServerВ 2016, or Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE) for WindowsВ 10. Driver signature verification may fail when you add a driver to a WindowsВ 10 image offline from a technician computer running any other operating system.

To learn how to add a driver on a running Windows PC, see Add a driver online in audit mode or Install a plug and play device. To learn how to add a driver to a PC running WinPE, see Drvload command line options.

Driver types

• .inf-style drivers: Many drivers include an information file (with an .inf extension) to help install the driver. These can be installed using tools described in this topic.
• .exe-style drivers: Drivers without an .inf file often must be installed like typical Windows desktop applications. To learn how to add these, see Add a driver online in Audit Mode
• Boot-critical drivers: Graphics and storage drivers may sometimes need to be added to the Windows image (as shown in this topic), as well as the Windows PE image, and in the Windows recovery (WinRE) image.

Add drivers to an offline Windows image

To add drivers to an offline image, you have to mount an image prior to adding drivers.

If you’re adding drivers to a WinPE image, you can add them to the WinPE image in the output folder you specified when you ran copype, for example: C:\WinPE_amd64\media\sources\boot.wim . This ensures that drivers will be included in WinPE each time you build WinPE media from that folder.

1. Mount a Windows image. For example:

1. Add a driver to the image.

To install all of the drivers from a folder and all its subfolders, point to the folder and use the /Recurse option.

To see all DISM driver servicing command line options, see DISM driver servicing command-line options.

Using /Recurse can be handy, but it’s easy to bloat your image with it. Some driver packages include multiple .inf driver packages, which often share payload files from the same folder. During installation, each .inf driver package is expanded into a separate folder. Each individual folder has a copy of the payload files. We’ve seen cases where a popular driver in a 900MB folder added 10GB to images when added with the /Recurse option.

To install an unsigned driver, use /ForceUnsigned to override the requirement that drivers installed on X64-based computers must have a digital signature.

1. Check to see if the driver was added. Drivers added to the Windows image are named Oem*.inf. This guarantees unique naming for newly added drivers. For example, the files MyDriver1.inf and MyDriver2.inf are renamed Oem0.inf and Oem1.inf.

1. Commit the changes and unmount the image.

Remove drivers from an offline Windows image

1. At an elevated command prompt, mount the offline Windows image:

1. Remove a specific driver from the image. Multiple drivers can also be removed on one command line.

Removing a boot-critical driver package can make the offline Windows image unbootable. For more information, see DISM Driver Servicing Command-Line Options. пїЅ

1. Commit the changes and unmount the image.

Add drivers to an offline Windows image by using an unattended answer file

1. Gather the device driver .inf files that you intend to install on the Windows image.

All drivers in the directory and subdirectories that are referenced in the answer file are added to the image. You should manage the answer file and these directories carefully to address concerns about increasing the size of the image with unnecessary driver packages.

1. Use WindowsВ System Image Manager (WindowsВ SIM) to create an answer file that contains the paths to the device drivers that you want to install.

• Add the Microsoft-Windows-PnpCustomizationsNonWinPE\DriverPaths\PathAndCredentials\Credentials component to your answer file in the offlineServicing configuration pass.

For each location that you intend to access, add a separate PathAndCredentials list item by right-clicking on DriverPaths in the Answer File pane and clicking Insert New PathAndCredentials.

See Configure components and settings in an answer file for information on how to modify an answer file.

1. For each path in Microsoft-Windows-PnpCustomizationsNonWinPE , specify the path to the device driver and the credentials that are used to access the file, if the file is on a network share.

When you include multiple device driver paths by adding multiple PathAndCredentials list items, you must increment the value of Key for each path. For example, you can add two separate driver paths where the value of Key for the first path is equal to 1 and the value of Key for the second path is equal to 2.

1. Save the answer file and exit WindowsВ SIM. The answer file must resemble the following sample.

1. Mount the Windows image that you intend to install the drivers to by using DISM:

If you’re working with a VHD or FFU, specify /Index:1 .

1. Apply the answer file to the mounted Windows image:

For more information about how to apply an answer file, see DISM Unattended Servicing Command-Line Options.

The .inf files referenced in the path in the answer file are added to the Windows image.

1. Check to see if the driver was added. Drivers added to the Windows image are named Oem*.inf. This guarantees unique naming for newly added drivers. For example, the files MyDriver1.inf and MyDriver2.inf are renamed Oem0.inf and Oem1.inf.

For example, type:

1. Unmount the .wim file and commit the changes. For example, type:

If you need drivers for WinPE to see the local hard disk drive or a network, you must use the windowsPE configuration pass of an answer file to add drivers to the WinPE driver store and to reflect boot-critical drivers required by WinPE. For more information, see Add Device Drivers to Windows During Windows Setup.

How to Remove Old and Useless Drivers in Windows 10

For every device you have in your Windows PC, you will need a driver for that device to work properly. The problem with this is that as time passes, your Windows machine will be bogged down with lots of unnecessary and old drivers, which eventually may result in problems on your PC.

Surely, you can easily uninstall any device driver using Windows’s built-in tools. The problem is that Windows device manager only shows currently connected devices, and there is no option to see hidden or old drivers. Here we show you how to force hidden drivers to appear and how to remove old drivers in Windows 10.

Note: this article is based on Windows 10, but it should work with any other previous versions, like Windows 7 and Windows 8, as well.

For Graphics and Sound Drivers, Use DDU

Graphics cards are complex things, and if you’ve either bought a new graphics card or have updated your old one, then you may find that it doesn’t work properly due to driver conflicts. (It may not work altogether or may be prone to crashes and restarts.)

If that happens, you should use the free Guru 3D tool DDU (or Display Driver Uninstaller) to completely uninstall your old graphics card drivers before installing the new ones.

Once you’ve extracted the tool, you’ll need to open Windows 10 in Safe Mode, then open DDU and select your device type (GPU or Audio) from the drop-down menu. Once you’ve made your selection, click “Clean and restart” for your drivers to be completely uninstalled.

Once you’re back in regular Windows 10, you can install new GPU or audio drivers without any conflicts or interference from the old ones.

Force Old Drivers to Appear

Before uninstalling old drivers, we need to force the old drivers to show up in the list.

1. To do that, press Win + X and select “Command Prompt (Admin)” from the list of options.

2. Type the following command and press the Enter button to execute the command:

What the above command does is force all the non-present or old and invisible drivers to show up in the Device Manager list. Once you have done this, you can proceed with the uninstallation.

Uninstall Old Drivers in Windows

1. To uninstall the old drivers, press Win + X and select “Device Manager” from the list of options.

2. Go to “view” and select the option “show hidden devices” to reveal all the hidden and old drivers.

The good thing about this feature is that all the old drivers are faded out, so you can easily identify the old or non-present drivers from current drivers.

3. Select the old driver you want to uninstall, right-click and select the Uninstall option.

That’s all there is to do. Using this tip, you can easily find and uninstall any old and hidden drivers. Always be careful not to remove any current device driver, as this may cause problems with your connected hardware device. Also, always check twice before uninstalling any device driver.

If you still have problems that need solving with your Windows 10 graphics, see our guide on fixing a faulty graphics card or check out our list of the latest Windows 10 update problems to see if you’ve been affected.

Related:

Content Manager at Make Tech Easier. Enjoys Android, Windows, and tinkering with retro console emulation to breaking point.

How to Uninstall Drivers in Windows

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By Michael King

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Installing drivers can be a hair-raising adventure, even on today’s modern operating systems. These finicky pieces of code act as the middleman between your PC’s hardware and its operating system. Although they install with ease just like any other software, they integrate deeply into the OS, sinking their teeth into areas most other software doesn’t go near. Most of the time the driver installation process is simple, seamless, and transparent to you, as it should be.

On those occasions when things go wrong, however, they can go really wrong, and even crash your entire computer. For example, when Microsoft’s Windows Vista came out in 2007, critics lambasted it for being slow and prone to crashing; Microsoft investigated the causes and found that a majority of crashes were due to driver issues.

Thankfully, when you prepare yourself for battle with a problematic driver, you have a couple of tricks that can help. Microsoft has introduced an easy way to roll back to a previous (and, you hope, more stable) version of the driver, or remove it from the system altogether, giving you a clean slate to try again or install a different version.

Roll Back to a Previous Driver

1. Click Start, type Device Manager, and press Enter.
2. Find and double-click the category of device causing the issue (for instance, the graphics card would be listed under Display Adapters).
3. Double-click the problematic device to bring up the Properties window.
4. Click the Driver tab.
5. Click the Roll Back Driver button.
6. A dialog box will ask you to confirm your decision to roll back to a previous driver. Click Yes to begin the roll-back process. Use the Properties menu to uninstall your driver software or roll back to a previous version.

At this point Windows will automatically remove the current driver for the device and reinstall the previous driver. You may then receive a notification that the system settings have changed, and Windows will ask you to reboot. If you see that message, you should reboot your computer as soon as possible.

Uninstall a Driver

When you need to uninstall a driver completely, the best and safest method is to use the device’s uninstaller program (if it has one). If you added the device to your system through an installer (as is the case with most graphics card and sound card drivers, for instance), you can uninstall it just as you would any other program.

1. Click Start, type Uninstall Program, and press Enter.
2. In the Uninstall window that appears, go through the list and find your device or drivers. Double-click the entry to begin the uninstallation process.

Sometimes devices won’t have an uninstaller, or the uninstaller will not appear in the list. In those instances, you can use the Device Manager to remove the driver completely.

1. Click Start, type Device Manager, and press Enter.
2. Find and double-click the category of device whose driver you wish to uninstall (for example, the graphics card would be listed under Display Adapters).
3. Right-click the device, and click Uninstall.
4. Windows will prompt you to confirm the device’s removal. Click OK to remove the driver.
5. After the uninstallation is complete, reboot your computer as soon as possible. In a pinch you can use the Windows Device Manager to uninstall troublesome driver software.

After you roll back or uninstall a problematic driver, you can try downloading and installing the latest version from the manufacturer’s website, or try a specific version that previously worked to get your computer back on its feet.