Delete All Drivers Windows 10

[Pasty Luckenbaugh]

Iam developing a Windows C++ application that drives a motor controller that is plugged on USB.This controller relies on Ftdibus drivers and it works fine on my PC.However, on a test computer it used to work but since I messed up with the Ftdi drivers as soon as I plug the controller, I get a BSoD (mentioning Ftdibus).I would like to cleanup the drivers, but:

Manually delete the driver setup in the registry. Using regedit, you can delete the registry entries for the driver. Drivers registry setup lives under 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services'. Find the driver name key and delete it. [hard]

The AMD/NVIDIA video drivers can normally be uninstalled from the Windows Control panel, this driver uninstaller program was designed to be used in cases where the standard driver uninstall fails, or anyway when you need to thoroughly delete NVIDIA and ATI video card drivers. The current effect after you use this driver removal tool will be similar as if its the first time you install a new driver just like a fresh, clean install of Windows. As with any tool of this kind, we recommend creating a new system restore point before using it, so that you can revert your system at any time if you run into problems. If you have a problem installing an older driver or newer one, give it a try as there are some reports that it fix those problems. DDU is an application that is programmed by Ghislain Harvey aka Wagnard in our forums, Guru3D.com is the official download partner for this handy application.

Looks like a simple question right? But Googling does not reveal any definitive answers. I've got an aging laptop that I'm trying to free some space on and am wondering if anyone can tell me safe directories to remove on Windows XP.

This folder almost certainly has various drivers that you'll need if you ever rebuild the system, and it's far easier to keep hold of them somewhere than to have to find them all again. At the very least burn them onto a CD before deleting from the HDD.

The location C:\drivers is very probably the path to which the original equipment manufacturer (OEM), such as Dell, HP, etc., copied all of the hardware drivers for your computer as installed at the factory. If this is the case, each subfolder of C:\drivers that contains a relevant *.inf file will be listed in the following location in the registry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DevicePath. When Plug and Play detects new hardware, it searches this list of locations for drivers. The selected driver is copied somewhere under the Windows folder, but it is recopied from the original location if you reinstall a driver.

If you have a computer from a large vendor that keeps drivers available on its website for years, then you may delete this folder tree and just know that you will have to download any necessary drivers from the web in the future if needed. This could be problematic if you decide to reinstall Windows and Windows does not have a driver included that is compatible with your network card. (You need a network connection to get drivers from the Internet, but you need the drivers before your network card will work.)

I recommend that you do not delete this folder tree. These drivers usually do not take up very much space. Instead, start by running the Disk Cleanup Tool. This tool checks for unnecessary temporary files, and it will suggest to you ways that you may free more disk space, such as uninstalling unused programs. On Windows XP, it is located at StartAll ProgramsAccessoriesSystem ToolsDisk Cleanup.

If you still need more space, check the following locations; they usually have numerous files (some of them large) that can be deleted. The Disk Cleanup Tool may have already emptied some of these folders. (Note: Text enclosed in percent signs refers to an environment variable. To get a list of what these mean on your system, type the set command at a command prompt. Alternatively, type the environment variable with percent signs into Windows Explorer's address bar and press Enter to find the value of a particular variable.)

As you are using a ThinkPad/Lenovo T23 computer, this folder is safe to delete. They create this folder with all the IBM drivers so that if you have problems with your display driver or something, you can re-install the "factory default" driver from that folder.

Another significant space hog is \WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles, which contains a combined i386\ folder from any Service Packs installed on the machine. It's handy to have around in case of a rebuild (for the same reason as the \drivers folder you mention, see @cagcowboy, @Rydell), but if you're really stuck for space you can get rid of it without any immediate problems. If possible I'd go along with @cagcowboy's advice about archiving to a CD first...

Also, anything in WINDOWS\ beginning $NtUninstall... (visible after turning on Show Hidden Files (Tools>Folder Options>View)) can go, if you don't need to uninstall the system updates that they refer to.

In the second case, the files have to be unpacked before the installer is run. The default location where they are unpacked to is C:\drivers\. Once they are installed, you no longer need the unpacked files and usually it is better to download the latest driver version if you intend to reinstall them than to keep around one that will almost certainly be out of date the next time you need it.

So, in short, they are safe to delete (at least on Lenovo computers). In fact, if you download drivers from the Lenovo website, you should delete C:\drivers\ as soon as the installation is complete because those files are doing nothing more than taking up extra space.

Some people here question the logic of deleting the files stating that they are usually quite small, and that it isn't worth the risk. But in my case, those unpacked files took up about 3GB of space! Considering that my total hard disk space is 750GB with less than 200GB allocated to the C drive, that is some valuable real estate to get back, especially when you consider that those files are literally providing no value (except maybe insurance in case Lenovo's site goes offline AND your computer needs to be rebuilt with the exact same OS you have now).

Of course, if you are really that worried that Lenovo's site will go offline, you should be visiting the site every 6 months anyway and downloading the latest (self extracting) drivers for your computer(s) and storing them in a local archive somewhere, just in case.

The long answer is that any c:\drivers folder created is proprietary (it is not a folder defined by Microsoft or any other convention) - something (a driver, a Lenovo disk image, etc) has created this folder, and there are no guarantees about whether it is just a temporary folder, or if it is actually being used. I came across a number of sound card drivers in the W2k era that created that folder instead of installing to Program Files - deleting the folder would nuke the drivers and force you start in safe mode to repair the damage.

One last thing, I usually organize this directory in a way that makes sense to me. The hardware vendors choose some pretty random structures. I then move the whole structure to a place on the disk where it gets backed up with all my other documents.

Dell is a common computer to create a c:\drivers directory. It always come from the factory like that. If you reload a computer and use the dell drivers disk and extract the drivers, it creates this folder and extracts them there.

In the past when I needed to free up space on a computer that was a good directory to get rid of. However, make sure you have the Dell driver disk, OR copy that folder and all contents to another computer, thumb drive, or burn to a CD/DVD so you have the drivers later.

I deleted the whole tree because it is now 2023, and the files were dated 2020 and 2021. I figured that all the drivers on my system were newer than that. Further, this system was originally Win10, but updated itself to Win11, so I don't think any of the original artifacts are needed at this point.

Yes, you can. Its back-up, maked by some driver back-up software. In case reinstalling Windows, all info on disc "c", will be deleted. So its no use to have back-up on disc "c". I suggest copy that to some other virtual or physic disc. It will speed-up your computer.

Recently I was trying to find why out Windows 10 updates were failing on my computer. The Driver Verifier utility indicated a problem with dcrypt.sys, a file that had been left in %systemroot%\system32\drivers even after I had uninstalled DiskCryptor several years ago.

I made the mistake of deleting dcrypt.sys myself, but when I did that, Windows stopped loading. My inference is that, despite its being third party software, its presence was somehow required by the Windows startup sequence. (I ended up solving this by reinstalling Windows completely.)

If you prefer a GUI method, use Microsoft's Autoruns for Windows. It requires no installation. Simply run it elevated, then navigate to the Drivers tab, clear the checkmark next to the driver you wish to disable, then reboot the computer:

Not only is this a simple way to enable/disable drivers and services (along with pretty much anything else that starts automatically in Windows), but it's very easy to undo changes if you find they have unwanted consequences or you're simply experimenting with your configuration.

By the way, the next time you disable a critical startup item and Windows will not boot, try using System Restore. It is capable of restoring the driver file you deleted as well as any Registry settings you might change (including changed made by Autoruns) in an effort to disable it.

Windows automatically creates Restore Points when certain critical actions are about to be taken (such as before installing Updates), but it's a good idea to create one manually before making changes to important startup items. And if your system fails to boot and you need to use a Restore Point, here are directions on how to do that.

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