You know how it is, you're the only person in the family who knows what's inside a PC, has a reasonable abilty to resuscitate a sick OS and the right tools to strip and rebuild a printer.
Hence along the way I've ended up with drivers files in the drivers folder, entries in the registry, but no trace of a device (not even hidden in Device Manager, I've checked every single device driver entry!).
The drivers in particular are for a Brother fax/modem seemingly, perhaps leftover from an install. I've never had one but I may have mended somebody's printer that did.
The drivers only load manually according to the start up info and are not active. Since I don't have the kit I assume they will never load or be active.
Without deleting anything, I've run Ccleaner but that doesn't spot any problems.
I assume that if I simply delete the drivers from the Sys32 driver folder that might leave something for Ccleaner to spot in the registry. That having been said there are other driver entries in the registry which though the drivers are long gone, still exist and windows will not allow deletion of the entries.
Wouldn't it be a joy if every time we plugged a device in, the drivers installed and when the device was removed they uninstalled.
Short of rolling up my sleeves and going through the registry with the delete key, is there any recommended way of obliterating the existance of redundant drivers and their registry entries?
The fact they are there probably doesn't matter but I like tidy. Bill Gates once said " think of your PC as a filing cabinet.." I am and I always hoover the crap out of the drawers when I have a tidy up.
Any thoughts welcomed
regards
Pete
Hence along the way I've ended up with drivers files in the drivers folder, entries in the registry, but no trace of a device (not even hidden in Device Manager, I've checked every single device driver entry!).
The drivers in particular are for a Brother fax/modem seemingly, perhaps leftover from an install. I've never had one but I may have mended somebody's printer that did.
The drivers only load manually according to the start up info and are not active. Since I don't have the kit I assume they will never load or be active.
Without deleting anything, I've run Ccleaner but that doesn't spot any problems.
I assume that if I simply delete the drivers from the Sys32 driver folder that might leave something for Ccleaner to spot in the registry. That having been said there are other driver entries in the registry which though the drivers are long gone, still exist and windows will not allow deletion of the entries.
Wouldn't it be a joy if every time we plugged a device in, the drivers installed and when the device was removed they uninstalled.
Short of rolling up my sleeves and going through the registry with the delete key, is there any recommended way of obliterating the existance of redundant drivers and their registry entries?
The fact they are there probably doesn't matter but I like tidy. Bill Gates once said " think of your PC as a filing cabinet.." I am and I always hoover the crap out of the drawers when I have a tidy up.
Any thoughts welcomed
regards
Pete