Uninstall Unused Device Drivers

Unused device drivers installed on a Windows XP machine still uses up valuable system resources.

The operating system loads the driver each time the computer boots whether the device is present or not, unless you specifically uninstall the driver.

Drivers from devices you have long since removed may be wasting valuable system resources.

Follow these steps to view and remove unnecessary device drivers:

1. Press WinKey + Pause to bring up System Properties box.

2. Select Advanced Tab. Click Environment Variables button.

3. Click New, below the System Variable dialog box.

4. Type or copy & paste devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices in the Variable Name text box. Enter 1 in the Variable Value text box.

5. Click OK twice.

6. Select Hardware Tab and click Device Manager button.

7. In Device manager, Click View>Show Hidden Devices.

8. Expand the various branches in the device tree and look for the greyed out icons, which indicate unused device drivers.

9. To remove an unused device driver, right-click the icon and select Uninstall.