Do you frequently update drivers? Does your build have Windows update enabled. Perhaps it has been a few months since you've done a clean install, or maybe you have a small SSD for your operating system and are looking to save some space. Well I'm going to show you how to remove drivers your system currently isn't using. First to find out just how much space your drivers are taking up go to:
C:\Windows\System32\drivers
and especially
C:\Windows\System32\DRIVERSTORE
Note the size of these folders, anything more than a couple gigs and you've probably got the opportunity to save some space. It's not that uncommon for DRIVERSTORE to be upwards of 10 gigs! Now you can use the in-house Microsoft utility called disk cleanup, but that still can leave you with a bunch of bloat left over. What can happen is devices like printers, cameras, monitors, headphones, your mouse and phone can update drivers through Windows update; and soon you're drivers are consuming lots of precious SSD space. To permanently clean unused drivers first it's a good idea to backup your system with whatever backup software you use. To continue open up Notepad, and copy then paste the following code:
@echo off
for /L %%A in (1,1,300) do (
echo Deleting OEM%%A.INF
pnputil /d OEM%%A.INF
)
Save wherever. Call the file whatever.bat and save the file as All Files not .txt. I save to my desktop and name the file .bat
Right click and run the file as an administrator, and then recheck the aforementioned folders to see how much space you've recovered!
C:\Windows\System32\drivers
and especially
C:\Windows\System32\DRIVERSTORE
Note the size of these folders, anything more than a couple gigs and you've probably got the opportunity to save some space. It's not that uncommon for DRIVERSTORE to be upwards of 10 gigs! Now you can use the in-house Microsoft utility called disk cleanup, but that still can leave you with a bunch of bloat left over. What can happen is devices like printers, cameras, monitors, headphones, your mouse and phone can update drivers through Windows update; and soon you're drivers are consuming lots of precious SSD space. To permanently clean unused drivers first it's a good idea to backup your system with whatever backup software you use. To continue open up Notepad, and copy then paste the following code:
@echo off
for /L %%A in (1,1,300) do (
echo Deleting OEM%%A.INF
pnputil /d OEM%%A.INF
)
Save wherever. Call the file whatever.bat and save the file as All Files not .txt. I save to my desktop and name the file .bat
Right click and run the file as an administrator, and then recheck the aforementioned folders to see how much space you've recovered!
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