So you have just got home from that new computer store with your fancy and all-new mouse, screen, keyboard, etc. You plugged in your new component, Windows detected it, installed drivers for it and it is working like a charm. A few months later down the road and the computer starts little by little to slow down.
Plug and play is a great concept, and automatic detection is even greater but how time passes old unused stuff piles in your hard drive and in Windows itself thus slowing down your computer and taxing it more and more as new components and software are added. Old drivers from old components sadly are not removed from Windows itself and over some larger period of time they can pile up and slow down your daily operations on the computer or even cause some problems in it.
This guide will teach you how to manually remove old unused device drivers from your Windows so it is fresh and like new again.
In order for us to remove old drivers, the first thing we must do is make them visible in our device manager, old drivers are hidden and will not show up, we must make this happen. We do this by pressing WINDOWS + X keys on your keyboard to bring up a hidden menu in Windows.
Once the menu appears, click on Command Prompt (admin)
Once the command prompt with administrator privileges comes on-screen type in it following string:
SET DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1
This command will force Windows to show all devices in the device manager including old ones that are not used anymore, but since their drivers are still installed, devices will show up.
When you type command press ENTER.
Once again press WINDOWS + X to show the hidden menu but this time choose the device manager
The device manager will open, go to view > snow hidden devices in order to show unused devices.
Open any category and if there is a device that was once used and still has its drivers in the system it will be shown as faded out.
Right-click on the device and click on uninstall device to remove it completely from your system.
Please always be careful when removing devices so you do not remove the device which is being used by mistake and always double-check that you are removing something that you used to have on your system. This method will show all hidden devices even ones that are hidden but crucial to the system working properly.
Upon updating to Windows 10, some users might encounter a blinking or flashing desktop after logging in. This will result in a repetitive restarting of explorer or you won’t be able to make the start menu and shortcut keys work. In addition, the network icon might not appear in your taskbar as well. Other Windows 10 error messages include error code 0xc000021a.
Your blinking or flashing desktop after logging in might be the result of problems with the bushell.dll shell extension, which is a part of the Norton Security Suite. Another possible cause for this annoying problem is an issue with your display driver since not all systems will use the same display driver and will depend on what graphics card you use.
In fixing the bothersome blinking or flashing desktop after logging in problem, you can do a manual repair method to address the root problem. You need to be familiar with the Windows command line to successfully go through the process. However, if you are not knowledgeable or confident enough to do this on your own, it would be best to seek help from a professional. Or, you might want to consider using an automated tool to solve the issue.
You need to identify first what’s causing the blinking or flashing of your desktop after login to properly address the issue. The following methods can be done if your issue is caused by bushell.dll shell extension issue:
NOTE: Text input is most probably affected by the explorer restarts so you might need to repeatedly type some letters or to carefully input texts.
NOTE: You might need to download the latest Video Driver on a working computer. Save it in a thumb drive then copy and install it on your computer. If in case there is no native Windows 10 driver, you can also download the latest Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 video driver. Afterward, install it in compatibility mode.
net stop wuauserv net stop bits
net start wuauserv net start bitsSince the folder has already been flushed, it will be populated afresh the instant your restart your computer and open Windows Update.