http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Tue, 24 Nov 2009 03:24:03 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/13/remove-old-windows-device-drivers/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/13/remove-old-windows-device-drivers/#comments Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:22:56 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=11191 If you are the type of computer user who likes to upgrade his computer with new hardware devices instead of purchasing a new computer whenever a speed, storage or performance update is due you might find the following tip interesting. It is very likely that old device drivers are still present on the system which can lead to all kinds of hardware related problems and even slow boot times as Windows is searching for those hardware devices in every boot sequence.

It is quite easy to check if Windows is still listing old device drivers on the computer system. All that needs to be done is to access the Windows Device Manager. The easiest way to do this is to press [Windows Pause] which will open the System Properties. A click on Hardware > Device Manager will open the device manager.

The first step in there is to enable the display of hidden devices. Hidden devices are all devices that are currently not connected to the computer system. This can be old device drivers or hardware devices that are currently not connected. To enable hidden devices click on View > Show Hidden Devices.

Windows will now display those devices in the list of hardware devices. Now it is time to click through all the hardware categories of the device manager to scan for devices that are not longer in use. This can be computer monitors, input devices like keyboards or mice, video cards and practically any computer hardware that can be replaced.

A right-click on such a device will provide the means to uninstall the device driver from the computer system. The uninstallation should remove the device entry from the device manager. Nothing can go wrong if you happen to uninstall working hardware devices from the system. Windows will either automatically install the new drivers at the next startup or prompt for a driver disk to perform the installation.

Cautious users might want to create a device driver backup before starting the process.

Tags: device drivers, device-manager, drivers, uninstall drivers, Windows, windows drivers, windows tips

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/13/remove-old-windows-device-drivers/feed/ 10 http://www.ghacks.net/2008/12/05/device-driver-backup/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/12/05/device-driver-backup/#comments Thu, 04 Dec 2008 23:57:12 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=8724 Driver Backup 2 (via Download Squad) is a portable open source software that can be used to backup and restore the drivers of a computer system. The backup software automatically scans the computer system after start and displays the discovered devices and their drivers in a list divided into categories that look like they were taken from the computer hardware dialog of the Windows operating system.

The software application has a surprisingly small size of just 1 Megabyte and runs pretty solid and fast. After the initial scan of the system’s device drivers a backup can be initiated. It is up to the user to backup all device drivers or only the drivers that have been selected. The backup software provides filters to display only OEM or third party drivers as well as only those drivers that have been digitally signed or are fully portable.

The device drivers can be stored on the computer’s hard drive using custom descriptions, filenames, path formats and device path formats. The device drivers will be stored in separate device folders by default. Each folder contains the drivers of that device. This can be a single .inf file or dozens of files that are needed for the device.

Once a device driver backup has been created it can be used to restore that set of drivers on the computer system. You can either restore a single device driver by installing the driver from the directory it was saved in or all device drivers from withing the device driver backup software.

Backup and restoration of backed up device drivers is a quick and easy process which makes Device Driver 2 a perfect companion for a USB device with enough storage space to store the drivers.

The device driver backup software comes with a few command line parameters to automate the backup and restoration process further. There is also a command line builder which is currently only available in Italian language. It should however be relatively easy to use it to create the parameters needed for the desired operation.

Tags: backup drivers, backup software, Device Driver Backup, device drivers, driver backup, driver backup software, portable software, restore drivers, windows software

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