By way of demonstration, I just opened Device Manager the normal way (Right-click the My Computer icon, select Properties, then Hardware>Device Manager), and this is what the USB devices category looked like (with the ‘show hidden devices’ option switched ON).
Entering Device Manager the hard way (as detailed above), the USB devices category looks like this - (with the ‘show hidden devices’ option also switched ON) - all those greyed-out devices are things that *have been attached to the computer once upon a time, but aren’t attached at the moment.
-And this is the case with most of the categories in Device Manager - I only picked USB devices because it’s the one that gets ‘dirty’ on a regular basis - I always clean up all the other categories if I have to switch a bit of hardware such as a network card or hard drive
You have to love the way the programmers think. They create an easy way to get to the info. Problem is, the info is wrong. But, there is a harder way that will get you to the same place but with the correct info. And I wonder why I have chest pain.
Some older dvd drives ran a utility to install the device or Windows wouldn’t recognize it correctly. This may be why it won’t just disappear when it was removed. Some start up program could be loading every time you restart, telling Windows the drive should be there. You can run msconfig.exe and look at all the stuff that runs at startup. Look for a program that could be for you Plexor drive and uncheck it for startup execution.
Yes - I’m really quite surprised that there isn’t some GUI way into the full-view version of Device Manager.
BTW, cleaning up all the greyed-out entries in there can boost performance and reliability of your system quite noticeably - especially if there are multiple entries left in there for old network interfaces - Windows checks to see if all that stuff (including the invisible ones) is there when it starts up, so boot times can be drastically improved that way.
This should be obvious, but keep in mind that if, like me, you use a laptop, and sometimes you use it in a docking station and sometimes you use it at home, you could have several different valid configurations in device manager, but only the active ones will be solid (ie non-greyed-out). If you go messing with stuff this way, be prepared to have some slight issues the next time your configuration changes.
That’s a good point, although typically, uninstalling redundant entries just means you’ll see a little balloon saying ‘new hardware found’ next time you plug the device in. The exception to this would be things that require drivers Windows doesn’t have as standard - in which case you’d also be prompted for the disk (which you might not have to hand, so yes, caution is good).
Thing is, if you have, say, a seven port USB hub, and you plug a USB flash memory device into a different port every day, by the end of the week, there will be seven distinct (invisible unless you do the procedure listed above) entries in Device Manager. Move your network card to another PCI slot to make room for something else and it will create another entry in Device Manager - but the old one will still be there, invisible, and so on.
So generally, it’s safe to uninstall:
-Anything greyed out in the USB devices category - it will usually just come back if you need it.
-Anything that is clearly a duplicate of a non-greyed-out entry.
Setting a System Restore point before you start removing things makes it even safer, because you can just roll back if something stops working.
I’ve uninstalled the old greyed out stuff to fix problems before. It’s a good thing to try, but you need to be ready with the drivers if Windows needs one later it can’t find. Windows will find most of the drivers if they are needed and have been installed at one point, because the drivers remain on the hard drive. You’ll have problems with anything listed under misc. in device manager. I’ve never seen a device listed there that worked. That is the default place when the system is having problems.
