Solved Safely disable/remove a driver (including dependent services)


Novgorod

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How can I uninstall or disable a driver service on Windows 10/11 which is NOT associated with a device in the device manager but still loaded on boot? I know it's possible to mess around with driver services (*.sys files) through the registry or by using the Nirsoft tool (ServiWin), but in my particular case simply disabling that driver via its startup mode leads to a BSOD on boot with INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE (even in safe mode), so I have to revert that registry entry through an offline recovery environment. The driver in question has nothing to do with storage (see below), so the BSOD is probably triggered by some dependency which expects the driver to be loaded. What is the way to "safely" disable or uninstall a driver service with all its dependencies?

Background:
The driver in question is called nipcibrd.sys (NI PCI bridge driver) which is part of an industrial/research programming environment called Labview. It comes with drivers to (optionally) interface with proprietary data acquisition hardware from the same company, and these drivers are loaded on startup even if no actual hardware is ever used (there are also no virtual devices created in the device manager). The drivers can't be uninstalled via the software's package manager without losing important functionality of the programming environment that is not related to any actual hardware - that comes down to corporate inflexibility and is besides the point for the present issue. The problem is that this (unused but loaded) nipcibrd.sys driver sporadically (20-50% of the time) causes a DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE BSOD when resuming from hibernation on certain mainboards, including mine. It's a niche issue with a niche software, so there will be no fix for it in the forseeable future. But I also don't use any hardware that driver is for, so it should be possible to disable or remove it without touching the rest of the software. However, simply changing the driver's startup mode from "boot" to "manual" or "disabled" in the services list has catastrophic consequences as explained above, so what is the correct way to disable such a driver without making the PC unbootable?
 

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@Novgorod


Have you tried just disabling the driver's Startup entry in Task Manager?
 
Last edited:

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Have you tried just disabling the driver's Startup entry in Task Manager?
You mean the autostart apps? There are no drivers there, just apps that start after logon. Drivers are services, but they aren't listed in the GUI either (services.msc), only in the registry under HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ (or via the Nirsoft tool GUI). And disabling the driver service there causes a bluescreen on boot as explained above, so I need to find out what are the dependencies of the driver.
 

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You mean the autostart apps? There are no drivers there, just apps that start after logon. Drivers are services, but they aren't listed in the GUI either (services.msc), only in the registry under HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ (or via the Nirsoft tool GUI). And disabling the driver service there causes a bluescreen on boot as explained above, so I need to find out what are the dependencies of the driver.


Have you tried Autoruns, which sees drivers and Services, as well.

 

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    CPU
    AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
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    Asus Pro WS X570-ACE (BIOS 4702)
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    2x Samsung 860 EVO 500GB,
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Have you tried Autoruns, which sees drivers and Services, as well.

Yes, it shows up in the "Drivers" tab and I can remove the checkbox to disable it, but it has the same effect as described in the first post, since it just changes the startup mode in the registry like the Nirsoft tool.
 

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Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with Labview software.

You might try searching the registry for other occurrences of the driver. There may be an OFF switch somewhere?
I wish I could be more helpful.
 

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    AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
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    G.Skill (F4-3200C14D-16GTZKW)
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    Dell U3011 30"
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    Still assembled, still runs. Haven't turned it on for 13 years?
No worries, it's a very niche issue which probably needs a case specific approach. I'll try to search the registry for references to this driver, that's a good idea (even if it will probably be a needle in a haystack thing :))...
 

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In order to delete old and unused drivers on my system, I use a utility called Driver Store Explorer (RAPR). No, I don't know why it is called RAPR :-).

You can find that free utility here:

Scroll down to "Releases" for the link to the actual download.

To use the utility:

NOTE: This procedure will NOT delete drivers that are in use on your system. It will only delete old versions of drivers and drivers not used by your system.

• After extracting the ZIP file contents to a folder, run RAPR.EXE
• Click any driver in the main window, press CTRL-A to select all drivers, and finally click inside any one of the check boxes. You should see all drivers become checked.
• To the right of the main window, make sure that “Force Deletion” is NOT checked, and then click the “Delete Driver” button.
• You will be asked if you are sure. Click on “OK”.
• After a little while you should get an error saying that some drivers could not be removed from the driver store. This is fine – this is simply a notification that indicates that any of the drivers that are in use were not deleted.
• Click “OK”.
• Close the program.

I export all drivers from my system so that I can reinstall them all with a single command after a reinstall. Before exporting, I use the above procedure to make sure I'm not backing up old driver versions and drivers no longer in use by the system.
 

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Please run the V2 log collector and post a share link into this thread using one drive, drop box, or google drive.

 

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In order to delete old and unused drivers on my system, I use a utility called Driver Store Explorer (RAPR). No, I don't know why it is called RAPR :-).
It's not listed there because it doesn't come with an inf file. But it's also not "unused" because it's loaded on boot as a service.


Please run the V2 log collector and post a share link into this thread using one drive, drop box, or google drive.
I wanted to avoid that because it gives out too much information (including user name etc.) and it's too massive of a dump to go through and redact. BUT - it pointed me in the right direction! The "installed-software" script lists all software packages from HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall, even if they are't listed in the "Programs and Features" GUI because they are sub-packages of a main software package. And it turns out that National Instruments software is very "granular" in this regard and every little component has its own MSI package, including the ominous "nipcibrd" driver which is its own little installer package. You're "not supposed" to install or uninstall this driver package directly but only through their own package manager - but even there it's not listed individually but is part of a larger package (called "PXI platform services" if anyone cares) and uninstalling that would remove a lot of dependent functionality that I need as described in the first post. Anyhow, I downloaded and extracted the "super-package" which contains the driver sub-package for their proprietary package manager, but luckily it was extractable with 7zip revealing the actual installer files (pciBrdI32.msi and pciBrdI64.msi). Using these MS installers, I could uninstall the nipcibrd driver "properly" - the driver service is now completely removed (not just disabled) and more importantly, it didn't brick the startup! It also doesn't seem to have affected any of the NI Labview functionality, so the problem can be considered solved! I'll monitor the hibernation behavior and report back if there are any more sporadic problems (maybe some other NI driver in the chain will screw it up now that the nipcibrd.sys is gone)...
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 11
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    CPU
    Core i9 13900K
    Motherboard
    Asus Z690-I
    Memory
    64GB DDR5
    Graphics Card(s)
    3080Ti
    Hard Drives
    Samsung 990 Pro 2TB
    PSU
    Coolermaster SFX 750W
    Cooling
    Custom loop

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