Delete Corrupt Drivers

[supanatral]

I've been trying to figure this out for a while now and I can't seem to find any sites talking about this.

XP is usually smart about making sure that the driver your trying to install is correct for that device however sometimes it's not 100% correct like when the driver is made for a slightly different model or sometimes the driver for the device gets corrupted. I know how to uninstall the device out of device manager and everything but then when you restart (or scan for hardware changes) it tries to reinstall the same exact driver as was installed before without even asking. Is there a way to uninstall the driver so that it won't try to reinstall the same driver as before?

[mjc]

I think it involves removing the copy of the driver from the driver cache folder...if I recall, if there is no driver there XP will ask the 'where is it' questions.

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Try uninstalling again and if prompted to reboot, choose no. Install the desired drivers, then allow reboot.

Mjc,
You helped me do this very thing with my laptop a few years ago. It was the only thing that worked.

[mjc]

That too...

That's right, removing the cached driver didn't help you...because it kept going back to the location of the install folder, too.

[supanatral]

Fair enough. So you have to use the setup and not just use device manager and select the drivers manually. I guess I can do that as a last resort. I just usually hate those extra programs that come with the drivers when you install them.