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This warning informs you that “Disabling this device will cause it to stop functioning.”. If you don’t know exactly what the device is, you should not uninstall it.Ĭlicking “Disable device” will cause a warning popup to appear as well. If you uninstall a driver that manages a core part of the computer, such as the CPU, you may end up crashing your computer or making it unusable. Tip: Be incredibly careful when uninstalling device drivers. Just because you don’t recognise something in the list doesn’t mean you don’t need it! Click “Uninstall” to uninstall a device, tick the checkbox to delete the driver too.
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For USB devices you may just be able to reconnect them in a different port, but reinstalling internal components may be a lot harder – please be careful when using this feature. This will make it significantly harder to re-enable the device if you change your mind. Uninstalling the device will remove the entry from the device manager.
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Unplug and replug in order to reinstall the device and drivers. Tip: If you do this to, say, a keyboard that’s still plugged in via USB, the computer will no longer recognise that keyboard as an input method. Either action will render the device unusable until you install the device driver again.
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If you tick the “Delete the driver software from this device” checkbox, it will completely remove the driver and associated registry keys from your computer. Clicking “Uninstall” will instruct will remove the links between the driver and the device. There is also a checkbox that can be used to delete the driver software as well. The popup informs you that this will uninstall the device from the system.
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The management options you have from the right-click menu allow you to: update the driver, disable the device and uninstall the device.Ĭlicking “Uninstall device” will cause a warning popup to appear. To manage a driver you need to expand the relevant section and then right-click the driver. Once you can see an individual driver, you can manage it by right-clicking on it. To see a specific driver, you need to expand out the relevant section. For example, all audio devices are grouped together. Press the Windows key+X hotkey and click “Device manager”.īy default, Device Manager shows all connected devices in a list sorted by the type of function they perform. To open Device Manager, press the Windows key+X hotkey combo and click on “Device Manager” from the drop-down box.
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