old driver buildup-how2clean?

[pr0iv2 0]

i have had 2k installed for quite some time now and have gone

through several motherboards, videocards, soundcards etc

there is a crapload of old drivers that are still in my windows dir and some even still load but wont work. is there a program out there that can

clean up old driver software?

[thatsteveguy 0]

If you have changed all those things and are still running the same install I would recommend that it is time for a fresh install. You'll notice a major diffrence in your OS running after that.

The clean up you would have to do is just too much to do by hand and a fresh install will solve that.

S

[ViolentGreen 0]

Quote:

If you have changed all those things and are still running the same install I would recommend that it is time for a fresh install. You'll notice a major diffrence in your OS running after that.
The clean up you would have to do is just too much to do by hand and a fresh install will solve that.
S

That isn't always an option if you have a store bought system.

[altered_computers 0]

This is what I do when I want to clear out the remnents of 6 different nic's in my PC - Granted, I'm no expert, but here's how I do it.

Disclaimer: Althought I've never had to reinstall because of it, I don't know or guarentee that this will work on your PC. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. Just PLEASE make a registry backup before starting.

 

Win2k:

Open regedt32, and browse to \HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum

Under Enum, there should be a bunch of sub-keys.

Depending on whether your PC is ACPI or not, it should have entries named ACPI, ACPI_HAL, DISPLAY, FDC, ROOT, PCI, etc.

Go through these, and for my machine, most of the drivers I wanted to clear out were under the PCI key.

I identified which key had the device I wanted to clear, then under Security/Permissions, change to full control.

Then it allows you to delete the key.

I don't know if it makes a difference to delete the individual keys that contain all the info on the device, but I just do what works for me.

 

Oh yeah, it might be a bad idea to delete the key with info on your boot drive's controller. I assume it would give you the STOP - Inaccessable boot device error if you did. I'm not about to try it myself, so I don't know.

[thatsteveguy 0]

Quote:

Quote:

If you have changed all those things and are still running the same install I would recommend that it is time for a fresh install. You'll notice a major diffrence in your OS running after that.
The clean up you would have to do is just too much to do by hand and a fresh install will solve that.
S

That isn't always an option if you have a store bought system.

Well If he has changed all that stuff then I really don't consider it a store bought system anymore, or you mean the fact you only get a recovery cd?
I never accept recovery cd's on my pre bought systems only full versions.
Mine point is simply that if you have changed that many components in a system a fresh install is warranted and will do far better for system stability than just trying to 'clean' it up.
S

[pr0iv2 0]

thanks for the info, i dont have a backup cd, so this is helpful

also, i was also wanting to know how to clean out the dlls and other files put in my windows dir.

is there any good cleaner programs that would do this for me?

it would be a pain to do it manually

[ooops 0]

Just do a search for registry cleaners i.e. ( RegVac ,RegCleaner etc )

 

I use 2 or 3 different ones periodically and my system is as fast as when I first built it.

 

When I've installed and un-installed a lot of different stuff (software , drivers etc.) and run these cleaners, they will find remnants of junk left

behind.

 

And one cleaner will find something the other one missed.

 

Hope this helps :x