Skip to main content

Driver Sweeper removes leftover after driver uninstall

With only a few exception, a majority of uninstallers that come with software applications are pure junk. These uninstallers remove only the core files- the executables and binaries and retain user files, configuration files, DLL files and other stuff making your system drive a junkyard.

Want to see how much rubbish is in your drive? Just open your Windows user profile directory and look into the Application data (or App Data) folder and you can easily recognize folders from applications uninstalled long ago. (Related – regain hard disk space by cleaning up these 9 locations).

It’s the same story with drivers. If you uninstall a driver because you replaced a hardware or want to upgrade a driver, it leaves behind bits and pieces of files. These leftover files might conflict with the newer drivers and lead to all sorts of problem.

driver-sweeper-main

Driver Sweeper is a tool that can remove driver leftovers from your system. The proposed method of using Driver Sweeper is this: (1) Use the official driver uninstaller to remove the drivers, (2) boot into safe mode and (3) then use Driver Sweeper.

When you run this software it lists the drivers supported by Driver Sweeper. This means that you might see entries for hardware that doesn’t exist in the system. The current supported drivers are NVIDIA (Display and Chipset), ATI (Display), Creative (Sound) Realtek (Sound), Ageia (PhysX) and Microsoft (Mouse). Select the ones you want to remove and click on Analyze.

driver-sweeper

The software then scans the hard drive and lists all files from the selected driver that still resides on the system. The files are already checked by default so you just have to click on the Clean button. If you wish you can uncheck specific files to keep them on the disk.

Be very careful when using this tool because you might inadvertently remove important driver components. The software allows you to create a backup of the drivers prior to removal and restore them if anything goes wrong. Alternatively, you can use driver backup tools like Driver Magician or Double Driver.

Also see:
Find and remove unused DLL files
Removes stubborn Windows applications
Remove stubborn antivirus/antispyware programs

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How to Record CPU and Memory Usage Over Time in Windows?

Whenever the computer is lagging or some application is taking too long to respond, we usually fire up task manager and look under the Performance tab or under Processes to check on processor utilization or the amount of free memory available. The task manager is ideal for real-time analysis of CPU and memory utilization. It even displays a short history of CPU utilization in the form of a graph. You get a small time-window, about 30 seconds or so, depending on how large the viewing area is.

How to Schedule Changes to Your Facebook Page Cover Photo

Facebook’s current layout, the so called Timeline, features a prominent, large cover photo that some people are using in a lot of different creative ways. Timeline is also available for Facebook Pages that people can use to promote their website or business or event. Although you can change the cover photo as often as you like, it’s meant to be static – something which you design and leave it for at least a few weeks or months like a redesigned website. However, there are times when you may want to change the cover photo frequently and periodically to match event dates or some special promotion that you are running or plan to run. So, here is how you can do that.

Diagram 101: Different Types of Diagrams and When To Use Them

Diagrams are a great way to visualize information and convey meaning. The problem is that there’s too many different types of diagrams, so it can be hard to know which ones you should use in any given situation. To help you out, we’ve created this diagram that lays out the 7 most common types of diagrams and when they’re best used: