Useful to uninstall "hidden devices" in Device Manager ??

Hello all,

Is it useful in terms of performance or other things, to remove hidden devices in the device manager?
What are (common) pitfalls ?

Thank you for reading (and answering...)

Kees

I don't know if it's "useful" or not, but I just ran Device Cleanup Tool version 1.2.1 and cleaned out all the orphaned Device manager entries, and rebooted. Nothing seems broken. I don't notice any obvious improvement either.
But there's no more greyed out entries in Device Manager.

Scroll down a bit and get the tool, here...


Device Cleanup Tool 1.2.1 scans clean, locally and at Virustotal.

Thanks to @Ed Tittel for this.


There's a text file included with directions.


Short version of directions...

1. Run the x64 version as administrator
2. Click on Devices > Select All
3. Hit the Del key.

I rebooted afterward. Don't know if that was even necessary.
I always reboot after I do something new.
I figure if it survives a reboot... it's good to go.

That's it.

The performance boost comes in when you connect a device that already have device driver the device setup quicker but when you remove the device driver then you have to either let Windows install or you install the device driver for the device you connected.

I also have been using Device Cleanup Tool for years, great program I use it on my computers plus my customers computers works well without any issues.

I know that using a USB device on another port/hub, creates another entry, but does it make any change when I do *not* remove these "hidden devices" ? So most of the time these are from earlier connections and do not specifically have older drivers.

If no performance gain is expected, I rather wouldn't disturb them

Uninstall device driver you're not going to connect to computer again, no performance gained by doing so.