jimbo385 Posted September 7, 2006 Share Posted September 7, 2006 Please help,When I view devices under Device Manager, all looks fine. However, when I click on Show Hidden Devices, I get a lot of duplication and these items are greyed out!If they are duplicates, can I safely get rid of them?A screen print is attached. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LLXX Posted September 7, 2006 Share Posted September 7, 2006 Do you really have 22 partitions in total? They're usually safe to remove, Windows will detect and reinstall them if they're not needed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nitroshift Posted September 7, 2006 Share Posted September 7, 2006 Maybe he used 22 kinds of USB sticks... But still Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimbo385 Posted September 7, 2006 Author Share Posted September 7, 2006 No, I really do not have this number of partitions!Do I disable them or uninstall them? The reason why I asked because I tried to uninstall one and it kept coming back like a bad penny. In the end, I had to rename the driver and disable it!Thanks for the reply though. I have another examples where I have 8 drivers present but only 1 active/installed. For example Video driver, Mouse Driver, Keyboard driver etc.I presume I can remove the inactive ones?Should I make a backup or restore point before I do this? If so, what's the best one/way?Cheers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ctrl-X Posted September 7, 2006 Share Posted September 7, 2006 (edited) When I view devices under Device Manager, all looks fine. However, when I click on Show Hidden Devices, I get a lot of duplication and these items are greyed out!These are usually devices that were once connected to your computer, but not anymore. Windows "remembers" these devices so they can be reactived quickly when they are reconnected.If they are duplicates, can I safely get rid of them?You can always try; they will automagically come back if needed.Maybe he used 22 kinds of USB sticks... But still If that were the case, these USB sticks would also appear as hidden devices under the "Disk drives" node. But just connecting a single USB stick to three different USB ports will already result in three different generic volumes. The same goes for USB mice, keyboards, etc.Do I disable them or uninstall them? The reason why I asked because I tried to uninstall one and it kept coming back like a bad penny. In the end, I had to rename the driver and disable it!Hmmm, it's possible that this is a device that is present, but is intentionally kept hidden by Windows. In "Network adapters" and "Sound, video and game controllers" you can usually find many examples of such devices.I presume I can remove the inactive ones?Absolutely. Edited September 7, 2006 by Ctrl-X Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimbo385 Posted September 7, 2006 Author Share Posted September 7, 2006 Well, thanks to all of your responses.I was able to uninstall the duplicates making sure that If anything was recognised, that I left it alone.All is now well in the Device Manager household.Cheers.Jimbo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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