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Generic "Remove-Phantom-Devices-Procedure" before updating drivers


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Device Manager does not display all devices by default. Non?Plug and Play devices and certain other devices are hidden. At times, you might need to view these hidden devices for troubleshooting problems with devices installed on your computer. In addition to hiding non?Plug and Play devices, the Device Manager also hides phantom devices. These are devices which were formely recognized and installed by 2K or XP, but are not currently attached/connected to the computer (such as a Universal Serial Bus [uSB] devices or 'ghosted'/'Phantom' devices). They are not displayed in Device Manager, even when you click Show hidden devices.

A typical situation would be to get rid of older Monitor/Graphic Card entries, old CD/DVD-ROM entries after updating the firmware of those, old HD Volumes, old USB devices that were once connected etc., or just shrinking/maintaining your Hardware Database.

So an addon to the Details tab (which is already enabled by default in XPSP2) would be to set the Device Manager to always show phantom devices (also works for Windows 2000).

If any driver installations fails, try out the following procedure to ensure a clean XP hardware database.

generic "Remove-Phantom-Devices-Procedure":

1. apply the above mentioned enhancement (attached .REG file) for viewing phantom devices

2. Uninstall the current NVIDIA driver (or any other driver)

3. Before the Reboot make sure you only have one Hardware Profile active

4. Reboot in Safe Boot

5. Open up the Device Manager and remove all "phantom devices"

6. Also in Safe Mode remove all remnants of NV*.dll/help files (or any other driver remnants) or use a driver cleaner

-> then reboot again to normal XP mode and install your driver.

SHOW_NON_PRESENT_DEVICES.reg

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  • 9 months later...

Updated text and added the enhanced reg file.

This one is dedicated to ministeve :)

post-10-11064116830_thumb.gif

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  • 3 years later...
Device Manager does not display all devices by default. Non?Plug and Play devices and certain other devices are hidden. At times, you might need to view these hidden devices for troubleshooting problems with devices installed on your computer. In addition to hiding non?Plug and Play devices, the Device Manager also hides phantom devices. These are devices which were formely recognized and installed by 2K or XP, but are not currently attached/connected to the computer (such as a Universal Serial Bus [uSB] devices or 'ghosted'/'Phantom' devices). They are not displayed in Device Manager, even when you click Show hidden devices.

A typical situation would be to get rid of older Monitor/Graphic Card entries, old CD/DVD-ROM entries after updating the firmware of those, old HD Volumes, old USB devices that were once connected etc., or just shrinking/maintaining your Hardware Database.

So an addon to the Details tab (which is already enabled by default in XPSP2) would be to set the Device Manager to always show phantom devices (also works for Windows 2000).

If any driver installations fails, try out the following procedure to ensure a clean XP hardware database.

generic "Remove-Phantom-Devices-Procedure":

1. apply the above mentioned enhancement (attached .REG file) for viewing phantom devices

2. Uninstall the current NVIDIA driver (or any other driver)

3. Before the Reboot make sure you only have one Hardware Profile active

4. Reboot in Safe Boot

5. Open up the Device Manager and remove all "phantom devices"

6. Also in Safe Mode remove all remnants of NV*.dll/help files (or any other driver remnants) or use a driver cleaner

-> then reboot again to normal XP mode and install your driver.

hi cant download any nvidia drivers. i just had the 2009 antospyware virus so I had to reinstall my whole operating system because there was no other way to remove the virus, so I m sure thats what strted this all. Nvidia is not in device manager or add remove program list. I downloaded driver sweeper and it shows 2 nvidia files but when I try to clean it it never seems to work. I tried downloading the: show phantom devices as you suggested but I dont know how to use it. May please help me??? peace

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