How to Remove Old Devices Ghost Entries

[Kouen Hasuki]

Sometimes when your using your pc you have to move devices like say your Wireless Network adapter or your Capture Card. but when you do you leave a Ghost behind for the most part this isnt an issue although I have noticed it does slow the computers Boot up and shut down time over time as your computer gets more "Haunted" by Ghost Entries. This can be especially annoying with Network Adapters as they Start to State for example "Realtek RTL8188CC Network Adapter #2" this can become even MORE problematic if you have to manually ad a IP Address or other network details to get onto what ever network your connected to and when you attempt to set the details with the adapter in the new position it claims it is already in use.

To Fix this and Generally Clean up your computer's Device Manager

1 Click Start, click Run, type cmd.exe, and then press ENTER.
2 Type set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1, and then press ENTER.
3 Type Start DEVMGMT.MSC, and then press ENTER.
4 Click View, and then click Show Hidden Devices.
5 Expand the Network Adapters tree.
6 Right-click the dimmed Device you wish to remove, and then click Uninstall.

Now please be careful when doing this I will NOT be held responsible if you bork your PC Please be sure what your removing before you remove it.

As a side note you will have to remove your current network adapter and let it reinstall after a reboot for it to not say any #x (x being the number it currently is)