Over time on Windows programs, it’s inevitable that previous system drivers get supplanted by new ones. Even on programs the place drivers aren’t rigorously maintained, Windows Update will sometimes replace a minimum of a dozen drivers yearly.Those who pursue driver forex extra vigorously may additionally use instruments just like the Intel Driver & Support Assistant (DSA), Nvidia’s GeForce Experience (which checks Nvidia graphics, sound, and 3D drivers), or basic driver administration instruments akin to ioBit’s Driver Booster or the SupplyForge Snappy Driver Installer venture to examine and replace drivers on Windows 10 or 11 PCs. The Intel and Nvidia choices think about gadgets they make, whereas general-purpose driver replace instruments examine all of them and level you at drivers in want of updating, with various levels of assist and help in getting them put in.Neither vendor-specific nor vendor-agnostic replace instruments take away previous drivers as they cheerfully add new ones. Thus, whereas each driver replace device that I do know of helps preserve drivers updated, they do nothing to alleviate driver bloat. In reality, the Intel DSA is spectacularly good at including to driver bloat, as you’ll see later within the story.All these pointless drivers eat up space for storing and should decelerate your system, so it’s good PC upkeep follow to filter the motive force cruft.What occurs while you set up a Windows driver?This is definitely fairly an enchanting course of and includes a number of behind-the-scenes motion in Windows. For this dialogue, I’ll keep on with so-called Plug and Play (PnP) gadgets. These are purpose-built to announce themselves to Windows in order that it might probably help to find a tool driver to make use of, if not at all times the most recent and biggest occasion. My info comes courtesy of the terrific Microsoft Press guide Windows Internals (seventh version in 2 volumes, as of this writing). Here’s the method:
A bus driver informs the PnP supervisor a few system it discovers throughout enumeration utilizing a tool occasion identifier (DIID).
The PnP supervisor checks the registry for a corresponding perform driver. When it fails to search out one, it tells the user-mode PnP supervisor about that system utilizing its DIID.
The user-mode PnP supervisor tries to carry out an computerized set up with out consumer enter or intervention. For installers that contain posting of dialog containers requiring consumer enter, the PnP supervisor executes a Hardware Installation Wizard to supervise such job(s) if the logged-in consumer has admin privileges. (If not, this exercise can be deferred till an admin-level consumer subsequent logs in.)
The Hardware Installation Wizard makes use of Setup and CfgMgr (Configuration Manager) API capabilities to find INF information that correspond to drivers which might be appropriate with the detected system. Mostly, this includes accessing such information from the native file system (or media like a CD or DVD) on the consumer’s course.
Installation proceeds in two steps: (a) The third-party driver installer imports a driver bundle into the motive force retailer, and (b) the OS performs the precise driver set up, utilizing the Drvinst.exe course of (the executable for which resides in %SystemRootpercentSystem32). As a part of that course of, .inf and .cat information are deposited within the driver retailer related to a DIID that takes the type of oemnnn.inf, the place nnn represents a one- to three-digit decimal quantity. Note: if you wish to discover this nnn quantity for any driver within the retailer (referred to as an index), it’s essential to use NirSoft’s wonderful DriverView. The device I like to recommend on this story gained’t present it to you.
Note that the driver-handling course of as documented says nothing about cleansing up older drivers current within the Windows driver retailer (in %SystemRootpercentSystem32DriverStoreFileRepository). Thus, this text focuses on investigating the contents of that driver retailer and eradicating older and/or out of date objects to cut back its on-disk footprint. Warning! There’s an essential draw back to think about when eradicating parts from the motive force retailer. If you take away all drivers apart from the newest one(s), you won’t be able to make use of the Roll Back Driver possibility within the Properties window for the associated system in Device Manager. That’s offered to assist customers revert to an earlier model of the motive force, ought to the present one show unstable.Indeed, when just one driver is current for a Windows system, the Roll Back Driver button is grayed out and inaccessible (see Figure 1) in its properties window. Ed Tittel / IDG
Figure 1: When just one driver model is within the Windows driver retailer, the roll again possibility is unavailable. (Click picture to enlarge it.)
A extra conservative strategy to pruning your driver retailer would possibly due to this fact be to maintain the 2 most present drivers for any given system, somewhat than solely essentially the most present one. I actually don’t comply with this strategy, apart from drivers which might be up to date steadily or when utilizing a beta driver. Those who keep deployment photographs can be well-advised to comply with this recommendation when testing drivers (and candidate deployment photographs). But all extraneous information, together with duplicate or out of date drivers, ought to certainly be pruned from photographs previous to deployment.Getting the lowdown on system drivers in Windows 10 and 11For all fashionable Windows variations (7 and newer) there’s a superb device out there to explicitly observe and handle the Windows driver retailer. That device comes from GitHub, and it is referred to as Driver Store Explorer (also referred to as RAPR.exe). Version 0.11.92, the present model as of this writing, works fairly effectively with each Windows 10 and 11.To function on the motive force retailer, it’s essential to run RAPR.exe with administrative privileges (right-click the filename after which choose “Run as administrator” from the ensuing pop-up menu). Next, it’s essential to enumerate the objects within the driver retailer, which produces a show that appears like Figure 2.Figure 2 exhibits my Lenovo P16 Mobile Workstation’s driver retailer after cleansing it up with RAPR. Before cleanup, I had 155 drivers; after cleanup there have been 118 left. Thus, 37 have been eliminated. This lowered the scale of the Driver Store from 5.84GB to 4.30GB, to get better 1.54GB of disk house, primarily based on properties for the FileRepository folder through which driver information reside. Ed Tittel / IDG
Figure 2: After cleanup, the P16 Mobile Workstation sports activities 118 whole drivers (down from 155). (Click picture to enlarge it.)
To offer you an thought of what can occur to this repository for driver information, I’ve seen the full merchandise depend on this similar machine go as excessive as 160, of which greater than 40 objects have been duplicated Intel drivers of 1 type or one other (principally Bluetooth or Wi-Fi). If you click on on any of the column heads proven on this show, the itemizing will re-sort itself primarily based on values in that column.As I discussed earlier, the Intel DSA and Nvidia GeForce Experience instruments are the worst offenders in relation to inflicting driver bloat. Intel’s device appears notably susceptible to deposit as much as dozens of copies of the identical driver within the driver retailer. My instance cleanup, depicted in Figure 3, exhibits seven cases for every of two Bluetooth USB gadgets. All are named “ibtusb.inf” as a result of the goal PC has two units of USB ports, and every one makes use of a separate driver occasion.Note: For no matter cause, when you have a number of cases of gadgets on (or in) your PC, it’s essential to certainly have a separate copy of a driver bundle (oemnnn.inf) for every one — that is why you shouldn’t at all times take away what would possibly seem like pointless duplicates of the identical driver on a PC. But excessive counts of the identical driver — or worse, excessive counts of a number of variations of drivers for a similar system — often warrant cleanup. Fortunately, RAPR can deal with this in your behalf.Clearing out undesirable drivers with RAPRTo prune drivers, click on the Select Old Driver(s) button on the high proper, then click on Delete Driver(s). RAPR handles the remaining for you. And don’t fear: it won’t delete any drivers at present in use. That’s what the “Force Deletion” possibility is for, however you’ll seldom want it. The solely instances I’ve ever used RAPR’s drive delete functionality is when a number of sources of excellent recommendation have urged elimination of a nasty or questionable driver in order that it may be changed with a distinct, working, and older model. This is particularly possible for printer drivers, for some cause.Figures 3 and 4 present a earlier than and after sequence for instance what typical cleanups contain. Ed Tittel / IDG
Figure 3: Duplicate/out of date Bluetooth gadgets galore seem on the P16 Workstation. (Click picture to enlarge it.)
Ed Tittel / IDG
Figure 4: After pruning, solely latest cases seem. (Click picture to enlarge it.)
When you contemplate that drivers for a typical graphics adapter devour over 1GB of disk house and that many system drivers require a minimum of 2 to 4MB, it’s straightforward to see how dropping undesirable entries can unlock some actual house.When is driver retailer cleanup wanted?An previous web saying applies to Windows system optimization and cleansing as effectively: YMMV, an acronym for “your mileage may vary.” This signifies that totally different programs or deployment photographs will inevitably exhibit totally different behaviors, values, and so forth.With that caveat in thoughts, check out the properties in your driver retailer listing: if it is over 5GB in measurement, I’d fireplace up RAPR and see what it might probably discover; if it is over 8GB, you will undoubtedly need to see what’s in there and do away with what you now not want or need. I’ve seen some cases the place the folder’s measurement exceeded 10GB. Trust me: you do not need to let issues go that far.Note for admins: When you replace a deployment picture for distribution, you’ll usually replace objects within the driver retailer. Because this doesn’t mechanically clear up older entries as you add new ones, it’s essential to use RAPR (or some equal command-line shenanigans) to wash out duplicate and out of date entries. The solely factor worse than further, unneeded drivers within the retailer on one PC is as many such copies as you’ve acquired photographs operating in your enterprise!With Nvidia show drivers sometimes consuming 1 to 1.2GB per copy (or model), maintaining older drivers round is sort of actually a waste of house. You can preserve two variations for security in case you like (merely uncheck the next-to-most-recent model after utilizing RAPR’s Select Old Driver(s) possibility), however there is no cause to maintain greater than two within the driver retailer. For a clear and examined deployment picture, it ought to have solely as many copies of any driver because it wants, and not more than that. (Before I began doing common cleanups myself, I would discover a dozen or extra Nvidia show drivers on a PC with a one-to two-year-old OS picture operating.)You actually should work at it to harm your self utilizing RAPR, so that you needn’t really feel compelled to make a picture backup earlier than cleansing up your driver retailer. But as a result of I’m a “belt-and-suspenders” form of man, I’ve gotten into that behavior, simply in case I by chance take away one thing it seems I really want. You can at all times reload that backup from the restore/restoration media in your PC in case you wind up with a failing or unbootable machine after a too-aggressive cleanup. (Or you possibly can mount the previous picture as a VM inside many backup utilities, akin to Macrium Reflect Free, and pluck the drivers you want from that driver retailer utilizing RAPR’s export and set up instruments.) Who is aware of? Either might come in useful. With a backup you possibly can clear up no matter you need, everytime you need with out concern.This article was initially printed in November 2015 and up to date in May 2023.
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