How to prevent Windows XP from automatically installing drivers at startup?

Hi,

I have noticed something with Windows XP. When you choose to uninstall the drivers for a particular piece of hardware, and after you restart when Windows prompts you to, the drivers are automatically re-installed at startup, like you never uninstalled them completely in the first place. My guess is that this happens because the driver files are stored away somewhere, and when Windows starts up and detects a piece of hardware that had drivers previously installed, it goes ahead and installs the hidden drivers.

I bring this up because I want to stop it from happening so I can install a particular driver. I have an N64 emulator called Project 64 that played a game called Majora's Mask perfectly, until I installed the Catalyst 3.1 drivers for my ATI Radeon 9500 Pro. When I had the Catalyst 3.0's, my game did not crash with a BSOD blaming "ati2dvag.dll" every time I pressed the "start" button, unlike now with the 3.1's.

So, my question is simply this: how can I prevent Windows XP from automatically installing my 3.1 drivers when I remove them? I want to do this so I can install the 3.0's. I am using DirectX 9 and used it with the 3.0's, so I don't think it is part of the problem.

Oh, and yes, I have tried using the Driver Rollback feature, but it isn't working because I have re-installed the 3.1's a couple of times.

I appreciate any help anyone can give me.

HolyAvenger999,

With XP you can't uninstall drivers that are in use. It's best to uninstall drivers in safe mode.
(hold F8 key during boot... Choose safe mode... )

Also while in safe mode, after unistalling the drivers, completely delete the device (ie: video card) in device manager.

Another thing you can try is to go to your Windows/drivers/??? folder and delete the contents within.
(example: c:Windows/drivers/video.... Don't delete the folder, only the contents in the video folder!!!)!!!!

Jake

Thank you for your replies.

I tried what you said, Jakesterr, and it worked perfectly. Indeed, the source of my problem with Majora's Mask was the Catalyst 3.1 drivers.

HolyAvenger999

:D Thats good news. Im glad all is well.

Jake

I've been having issues with needing to install an older driver for a sound card. My driver kept "magically" reappearing on reboot, and it seemed there was no way to prevent XP SP3 from finding the newest driver and automatically installing it. I realized there is a folder in your windows directory with cab files from sp1, sp2 and sp3, and windows will look in this folder to automatically find drivers for your hardware.

If you rename the folder called DRIVER CACHE, windows won't know where to look to auto install the driver, and you can choose the (older) driver you wish to use.

Start a new thread. This one's from 2003.

For the moderators: Lame that when one replies to a thread with pertinent information (that comes up on search engines when searching for a solution to an issue) that you would say "Start a new thread. This one's from 2003." and REMOVE the information I typed in?! If this is the thread people find when searching for answers, who the hell cares how old it is? Does it matter at all?! No. It doesn't.

Thanks for removing my post. You can go ahead and remove my account too, because if this is how you run things, I won't be returning to this forum.

...

For your information, the person that replied was NOT a Mod, just a regular member. Your post was not removed, it was moved to it's own thread.
I appreciate that you have posted with good intentions, But after 7 years, do you think the OP would still want the answer?

.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by crunchie

For your information, the person that replied was NOT a Mod, just a regular member. Your post was not removed, it was moved to it's own thread.
I appreciate that you have posted with good intentions, But after 7 years, do you think the OP would still want the answer?

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The OP might not, but the people who find this thread via an internet search definitely would! :)

Also, it seems like a thread started as a response to another post (and thus probably pretty non-sequitur sounding) would be stranger than having a thread simply get a response 7 years later (especially if the information is still relevant).

Your forum. Your rules. Sorry if my response to being moved (I thought my post was simply deleted) was a little (or more than a little) huffy.
;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by foxy

Start a new thread. This one's from 2003.

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If the information is still relevant, does it really matter when the thread was started? I'm just trying to keep from cluttering up a forum unnecessarily.

No problem :). Not sure why it was moved, but probably because the initial statement looked like you had the same problem.
Don't take it personally :).

There are a few reasons not to practise thread necromancy. OP has long gone. All who posted in the thread get an email notification of the reply.
I think in some circumstances, replying to an old thread is ok, but in others is just pointless.

It may have been me that split it off yesterday, I should have read the reply more carefully, I saw Foxy's remark and thought it was a request for help in a 7 year-old thread :o I've re-merged the two threads.

Sorry about that everybody.

I 100% agree with kidjedi.

Historically we would all go to our forum of choice, and navigate to the threads we want from there. Nowadays search engines have taken over. I'd argue there's one kind of group of people that finds threads via the web site hosting them, and that's the group of people that Answers the questions. These people visit the forum site regularly, and look at the top of the list for new posts and then set about answering the next round of questions. However those of us that use forums for answers don't do this, we just Google it and end up here.

In any case, kidjedi's post solved my problem, even further in the future!