How to remove old hidden device drivers from Windows 11

Windows stores all the device drivers you have used on your machine. Often, these old and outdated device drivers do take up storage space and may conflict with existing new drivers. It is completely safe to remove these old hidden drivers and you can do it easily. In this article, we will demonstrate how to safely remove all old, incompatible device drivers from your system.

How to Safely Remove Old Hidden Device Drivers

It is very easy to remove all outdated device drivers from your system.

Step 1 View all devices

You can view all devices with a simple adjustment in system properties.

1. To open File Explorer, you must press ⊞ Win key R.

2. Then, write this " sysdm.cpl " and press Enter key.

This will open the System Properties window.

3. When the System Properties panel opens, go to the "Advanced" section.

4. Here, click "Environment Variables...".

5. Now, in the User Variables section, click on "New...".

6. After that, copy-paste it into the "Variable Name:" box -

devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices

7. Then, Set "Variable Value:" to "1" and click "OK".

8. After that, click "OK" to save these changes.

This way you can view all unused devices.

Step 2 Uninstall the device driver

1. You must open the Device Manager. To do this, press the ⊞Win R key combination.

2. Then, enter “ devmgmt.msc ” and click “ OK ” to open the device manager.

#3. Device Manager lists all device drivers on the system. However, usually, it hides any device drivers that you are not using or removes the device from the system.

4. So, click on "View" and then click on "Show Hidden Devices" to view all hidden device drivers.

5. Now, expand the different sections. Then, look carefully for old or drivers you don't need. These drivers will be grayed out.

[If you see any old audio or video drivers, follow the next method to uninstall the display driver from your system. ]

6. Except for the graphics card and audio driver, right-click the gray driver and click "Uninstall Device".

7. Then, click "Uninstall" to confirm the process.

#8. Repeat the same steps to uninstall all device drivers from the system.

#After you are sure that all old device drivers have been removed, close Device Manager.

How to safely remove graphics and audio device drivers

If you want to remove graphics and audio device drivers, you must use the Display Driver Uninstaller tool. However, there are a few steps you need to follow.

Step 1

You must download the Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU).

1. First, you have to access the display driver uninstaller.

This will automatically download a zip file on your system.

2. Go to the location where you downloaded the DDU zip file.

3. Now, just unzip the DDU zip file. Remember where you want to extract the files.

Close File Explorer when finished.

第 2 步 – 在安全模式下启动

现在，您可以启动进入安全模式并从那里使用 DDU。

1. 打开设置。

2. 在设置窗口中，进入“系统”设置。

3. 如果您向下滚动右侧窗格，您将找到“恢复”选项。只是，点击它。

4. 现在，要启动恢复过程，请点击“立即重新启动”。

您的系统将重新启动进入 Windows 恢复模式。

5.到达那里后，单击“疑难解答”以解决此问题。

6. 在下一页上，找到并点击“高级选项”菜单。

7. 这里会有多种选择。您必须单击“启动设置”才能访问它。

8. 只需点击一次“重新启动”选项。

这将重新启动您的系统并显示

9. 您只需按键盘上的F4即可选择“启用安全模式”选项。

只需等待您的系统启动进入安全模式即可。

STEP 3 使用 DDU

现在，当您启动到安全模式时，您可以使用 DDU 工具。

1. 在安全模式下，打开文件资源管理器并转到您提取 zip 文件的文件夹。

2. 然后，双击DDU 文件夹进行访问。

3.然后，点击“ Display Driver Uninstaller ”访问它。

4. DDU 打开后，点击“确定”。

5. 这将自动打开选项页面。现在，确保选中“当“Windows”搜索设备驱动程序时阻止从“Windows 更新”下载驱动程序” 。

6. 现在，根据显卡 (AMD/NVIDIA)，转到相应的部分。您必须选择删除 GPU/音频驱动程序的所有痕迹。因此，请选中所有框。

完成后，关闭页面。

7. 在 DDU 页面上，点击“选择设备类型”并选择音频或 GPU，您要删除的内容。

8. 然后，点击“选择设备”并选择制造商。

9、然后，点击“清理并重启”，删除旧显卡/声卡驱动，重启系统。

现在，您无需执行任何操作。DDU 将卸载驱动程序并可能会重新启动机器几次。

这样，您可以从系统中移除旧的显卡/音频设备。

可选步骤

此外，您可以使用磁盘清理从系统中清除所有旧设备和驱动程序。

1.您必须打开磁盘清理。因此，按Win 键 + R。

2. 然后，输入这一行并按Enter。

清洁工

3. 出现磁盘清理时，选择“ C: ”驱动器并点击“确定”。

4. After that, click "Clean System Files".

5. Again, you must select the C: drive.

6. After that, check "Device Driver Package" and click "OK".

This will remove the device driver package from your system.

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