Are this many devices normal?

Birk · Feb 16, 2025

My current-level Win11 system has been continuously upgraded starting with Windows 7. I have not done a clean Windows install since the cows came home, primarily because I remember how long it took me to get everything properly reconfigured after a Win 7 clean install. Now my Device Manager screen looks like this:

All that strikes me as being a bit excessive. But is it? And if it is, is there a way to eliminate the unneeded devices without doing a clean install? Maybe there's a website that tells what each of these devices does?

hsehestedt · Feb 16, 2025

My system also shows a huge list. Here is what my system looks like:

Ghot · Feb 16, 2025

Here's mine (AMD build)...

hsehestedt · Feb 16, 2025

Conclusion: Looks like the number of entries being seen is perfectly normal.

dacrone · Feb 16, 2025

Birk said:
My current-level Win11 system has been continuously upgraded starting with Windows 7. I have not done a clean Windows install since the cows came home, primarily because I remember how long it took me to get everything properly reconfigured after a Win 7 clean install. Now my Device Manager screen looks like this:

All that strikes me as being a bit excessive. But is it? And if it is, is there a way to eliminate the unneeded devices without doing a clean install? Maybe there's a website that tells what each of these devices does?

Yes. its normal. but you should fix

andrew129260 · Feb 16, 2025

If your system is working well, make a system image. Then you can use something like driver explorer to remove outdated drivers.

GitHub - lostindark/DriverStoreExplorer: Driver Store Explorer

Driver Store Explorer. Contribute to lostindark/DriverStoreExplorer development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

But if it doesn't bother you, and your system is working fine, you can leave it alone.

Steve C · Feb 17, 2025

Birk said:
My current-level Win11 system has been continuously upgraded starting with Windows 7. I have not done a clean Windows install since the cows came home, primarily because I remember how long it took me to get everything properly reconfigured after a Win 7 clean install. Now my Device Manager screen looks like this:
View attachment 125605
All that strikes me as being a bit excessive. But is it? And if it is, is there a way to eliminate the unneeded devices without doing a clean install? Maybe there's a website that tells what each of these devices does?

Quite normal. Only be concerned if there are any missing drivers which will be highlighted.

Birk · Feb 17, 2025

Well, very interesting and illuminating feedback - thanks to everyone. I guess i shouldn't feel like my system is wacked.

A couple of questions/feedbacks:

dacrone: fix what exactly? You listed 4 devices, but what about them? My guess is if I deleted them and then do a refresh they will just come right back.

andrew: I have tried RAPR. The only thing is says are deletable are 4 obsolete print drivers, but it fails to delete them. I have no idea why they fail so I just left them alone. They were all small files anyway.

I admit I may be slightly obsessive/compulsive about this, but it just seems to me that that huge list of devices has lots of useless fluff/junk in it. I get that "if it ain't broke don't fix it" (I actually say that a lot to other people), but damn, wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to clean up the list?

Steve C · Feb 17, 2025

Birk said:
Well, very interesting and illuminating feedback - thanks to everyone. I guess i shouldn't feel like my system is wacked.

A couple of questions/feedbacks:

dacrone: fix what exactly? You listed 4 devices, but what about them? My guess is if I deleted them and then do a refresh they will just come right back.

andrew: I have tried RAPR. The only thing is says are deletable are 4 obsolete print drivers, but it fails to delete them. I have no idea why they fail so I just left them alone. They were all small files anyway.

I admit I may be slightly obsessive/compulsive about this, but it just seems to me that that huge list of devices has lots of useless fluff/junk in it. I get that "if it ain't broke don't fix it" (I actually say that a lot to other people), but damn, wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to clean up the list?

If you start removing drivers you don't understand then you risk making your PC unbootable and will likeley generate a huge number of Event Mamager warnings.

dacrone · Feb 17, 2025

Birk said:
Well, very interesting and illuminating feedback - thanks to everyone. I guess i shouldn't feel like my system is wacked.

A couple of questions/feedbacks:

dacrone: fix what exactly? You listed 4 devices, but what about them? My guess is if I deleted them and then do a refresh they will just come right back.

andrew: I have tried RAPR. The only thing is says are deletable are 4 obsolete print drivers, but it fails to delete them. I have no idea why they fail so I just left them alone. They were all small files anyway.

I admit I may be slightly obsessive/compulsive about this, but it just seems to me that that huge list of devices has lots of useless fluff/junk in it. I get that "if it ain't broke don't fix it" (I actually say that a lot to other people), but damn, wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to clean up the list?

To tag someone, quote them or @ them so they’ll get notified

Fix the one with the yellow triangle

Rollback_Jockey · Feb 17, 2025

Birk said:
dacrone: fix what exactly? You listed 4 devices, but what about them? My guess is if I deleted them and then do a refresh they will just come right back.

AMD crash defender showed it has issues.

PurSpyk!! · Feb 17, 2025

Have you changed hardware during this upgrade cycle? If you have show hidden devices in Device Manager, you will a whole lot more, I usually remove these ghost devices.

Birk · Feb 17, 2025

PurSpyk!! said:
Have you changed hardware during this upgrade cycle? If you have show hidden devices in Device Manager

Thanks for pointing that out - I've not tried that before. The answer is yes, I've changed trackballs a couple of times. So when I enabled hidden devices 2 new trackball items appeared, and one of them had a tiny question mark next to it. So I deleted it, restarted, and it came back - still with the question mark. It's not clear to me what the hidden attribute means, but for now I'll just leave them alone.

Rollback_Jockey said:
AMD crash defender showed it has issues.

Correct! It did - and the reason was I had used Autoruns64 to disable the registry entries for that function. I do have an AMD graphics card, but the AMD software has never crashed, so I figured why bother with it. But I put it back anyway. Note that I've also disabled Raid support because I have no Raid devices - I've been running fine like that for years.

Birk · Feb 17, 2025

dacrone said:
To tag someone, quote them or @ them so they’ll get notified

Thanks for that - I've tried the Quote function in a couple of other boards that use this same software, but it never worked. So I just gave up on it. But it works A-OK here, so I'll do that from now on.

Are this many devices normal?

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