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.
Prevent automatic driver install
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.