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Lead Forum Moderator
Group: Vista Forum Moderator
Last Login: Today @ 4:34:23 PM
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| In Vista, every device driver you install is copied into the "driver store". This "store" is not somewhere you go to purchase drivers; instead, it's an area on the drive where Vista squirrels away device drivers for safe keeping. This is done so that, if you need to reinstall that device later, Vista already has the driver available.
Problem is, you may want to remove this driver so Vista doesn't use it anymore -- especially in the situation where the driver doesn't work, and after you remove the entry from Device Manager, upon reboot, before you can install a different driver, Vista automatically reinstalls the driver from the "store".
What you will need to do is locate the actual device "package" you need to remove and delete it from the driver store.
To locate the device "package", open an elevated command prompt window (enter"cmd" in the start area, then press ctrl-shift-enter) and enter "pnputil.exe -e". This will provide a list of all the third-party drivers installed.
Search the list for the driver version you want removed. It will be oem##.inf. (where ## is the actual two-digit number of the inf file)
To remove that driver, using the same elevated command window, enter "pnputil.exe -d oem##.inf" to be safe, find all the driver files and remove them all.
Then, you need to clean out the INF directory:
1) open %windir%\inf\setupapi.dev.log in Wordpad
2) search for ", this will be found on a DevDesc line
3) look a few lines up for the "inf:" line. It will say Openeded INF: and at the end of the line, you will see the actual name of the inf file.
4) remove that file from the INF directory.
5) look for ServiceBinary=c:\Windows\system32\DRIVERS containing a reference to the same inf file. That's the driver file to delete.
6) continue this process, search for all the inf sequences and DRIVERS references, removing the files from the INF and DRIVERS directories as needed.
Also, be sure to remove the device from Device Manager before you reboot.
ASUS A832nSLI-Deluxe, AMD 64X2 4400 OC 2.4GHz, 3GB OCZ,
Running: Windows 7, Vista 32-bit, Ubuntu 8.10, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
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Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 7/9/2008 12:11:02 PM
Posts: 5, Visits: 4 |
| | ok i think i am suffering from a "bad" driver problem. i bought a philips usb skype phone and it doesnt work on my vista pc, yet it works perfectly on my friend's and she is running the same version of vista as myself. the message i always get when i attach the usb cable is that the driver isnt loading and vista isnt recognizing my device. btw, my usb ports work fine with all other devices i have. therefore, i think i have a bad or an old driver that keeps denying my device access. if i do have a bad driver how do i know which one it is? how can i fix this problem? thanks! |
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Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 10/23/2008 5:32:51 PM
Posts: 1, Visits: 1 |
| Hi,
I hope this is not that late to ask for some help in this issue.
I am the admin user and I am trying to remove the INF file, but it says I haven't the permissions, so: Access Denied.
I've already tried to set the correct rights on the folder and I can't do it too: Access Denied.
How did you do?
Thanks for the help,
Marc de Barros |
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Lead Forum Moderator
Group: Vista Forum Moderator
Last Login: Today @ 4:34:23 PM
Posts: 2,172, Visits: 2,120 |
| The instructions say to use an elevated command prompt window, not the normal command prompt window. Also, unless you unhid the real Admin account, your're NOT logging in as the Administrator, you're logging in as a normal use with some admin rights. Read the pinned post about unhiding the real admin account if you haven't done that already.
ASUS A832nSLI-Deluxe, AMD 64X2 4400 OC 2.4GHz, 3GB OCZ,
Running: Windows 7, Vista 32-bit, Ubuntu 8.10, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
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