Overview

After the hardware upgrade or peripheral changes on the windows desktop or server, it typically leaves obsolete drivers that were no longer needed and needed to be removed.

Here are the steps to find and remove those obsolete drivers.

To find the drivers.

Using PowerShell:

Open PowerShell as an administrator. To display a complete list of installed drivers, run the following command:

Get-WmiObject Win32_PnPSignedDriver | Select-Object DeviceName, DeviceClass, Manufacturer, DriverVersion, DriverDate, InfName | Out-GridView

Using DISM

dism /online /get-drivers /format:table

This will show you a table with details like device name, class, manufacturer, driver version, installation date, and the driver’s .inf file name.

Using pnputil.exe

pnputil.exe /enum-drivers 

Remove the drivers.

After you find the obsolete drivers, you can remove it use the following:

Remove it using pnputil

pnputil.exe /remove-device oemxxx.inf

If needed, add the /force switch to forcefully remove the driver:

pnputil /remove-device oemxxx.inf /force