Unable to force driver removal to find failing driver(s)

Mark Phelps · Mar 4, 2023

I have a Win11 Pro PC that keeps crashing on me. I ran WhoCrashed and all it tells me is that it is likely a driver issue.

So, I used DISM to export drivers to a folder (for backup), created a spreadsheet of the driver info and set about using pnputil to remove some drivers. I did this a while back to clean out old drivers from devices no longer in use and it worked without issue.

I have three HP drivers that (most likely) are the issue, as all the other drivers are for current devices and are themselves fairly current. The HP drivers are OLD, and since I no longer have any HP devices connected to that PC, I want to remove them. But I am unable to remove them because Windows claims they are in use. I tried the /force option of pnputil and even tried using Driver Store Explorer. All fail to remove these drivers.

Apart from a clean-install, is there anything else I can try?

glasskuter · Mar 4, 2023

The proper way.... How to remove old and useless Drivers in Windows 11/10
Worked in 7, 10 and also 11
The improper way I have used in a tight - I found the names and file location using properties of the driver. I then booted from a live linux distro drive, and deleted them. That's not the right way, though, since it didn't remove any registry entries associated with the driver.

cereberus · Mar 4, 2023

Mark Phelps said:
I have a Win11 Pro PC that keeps crashing on me. I ran WhoCrashed and all it tells me is that it is likely a driver issue.

So, I used DISM to export drivers to a folder (for backup), created a spreadsheet of the driver info and set about using pnputil to remove some drivers. I did this a while back to clean out old drivers from devices no longer in use and it worked without issue.

I have three HP drivers that (most likely) are the issue, as all the other drivers are for current devices and are themselves fairly current. The HP drivers are OLD, and since I no longer have any HP devices connected to that PC, I want to remove them. But I am unable to remove them because Windows claims they are in use. I tried the /force option of pnputil and even tried using Driver Store Explorer. All fail to remove these drivers.

Apart from a clean-install, is there anything else I can try?

You could check in services to see if any HP services are being started automatically and disable them. Then you may be able to remove drivers.

Also check in Task Scheduler to see if it is starting any HP apps/services.

Of course check if any HP apps are still installed from apps menu as well.

I rather doubt it is these as you are not using them.

Does PC work on in safe mode. If so, you may have to uninstall an app in normal mode, see if crash goes away. If not reinstall app, try next one etc. until you find culprit - Tedious but eventually you will find app that is causing issue.

It is most likely one of your recent apps if it started recently.

If you clean install, install one app at a time, test pc, reboot install next one - if you install all at once, you may still be none the wiser.

Mark Phelps · Mar 4, 2023

Thanks for the replies. It will take me a while to work through these. I will post back with results.

Mark Phelps · Mar 4, 2023

glasskuter said:
The proper way.... How to remove old and useless Drivers in Windows 11/10
Worked in 7, 10 and also 11
The improper way I have used in a tight - I found the names and file location using properties of the driver. I then booted from a live linux distro drive, and deleted them. That's not the right way, though, since it didn't remove any registry entries associated with the driver.

OK, went into Device Manager, removed all the previously hidden drivers, rebooted into safe mode, reran pnputil -- failed again claiming the drivers were in use.

Have not tried the Linux method. Will have to find a boot USB stick -- which I have somewhere3.

glasskuter · Mar 4, 2023

What exactly are the 3 HP drivers?

Mark Phelps · Mar 4, 2023

glasskuter said:
What exactly are the 3 HP drivers?

I rebooted from an Ubuntu USB stick and removed the HP drivers -- hpvyt13 and prnhpcl1(2) -- from both DriverStore and spool\drivers\x64 directories.

We'll see if the crashing continues.

In have a full driver backup as well as a full image backup, so I can restore if a driver removal renders Windows unbootable.

glasskuter · Mar 4, 2023

Those drivers are for an HP printer.

Mark Phelps · Mar 7, 2023

glasskuter said:
Those drivers are for an HP printer.

Yeah, I know.

It's been three days since I forced their removal using Linux and the PC has not crashed since. So, I have to presume that those drivers were the issue.