How to delete obsolete drivers from the Driver Store in Windows

Posted on Christian By Christian 3 Comments on How to delete obsolete drivers from the Driver Store in Windows

In this article, you will learn how to delete obsolete drivers from the Driver Store in Windows. The driver store is a trusted collection of inbox and third-party driver packages. See the following guide for “how to rename a Printer in Windows 10“.. Also, see reasons to deploy AAD, how to set up Azure AD Tenant, and how to add or delete users, and set permissions in Azure Active Directory. The operating system maintains this collection in a secure location on the local hard disk. Only the driver packages in the driver store can be installed for a device.

When a driver package is copied to the driver store, all of its files are copied. This includes the INF file and all files that are referenced by the INF file. All files that are in the driver package are considered critical to the device installation.

When you install or update device drivers in Windows, older driver versions are still stored in the system. Each time you install or update your device driver, Windows OS since the introduction of Windows Vista continues to store the old version of the driver in the system Driver Store. Thereby, if the system doesn’t work correctly with the new driver, the user can roll back to an older version of the driver.

Caution: Before deleting obsolete drivers

Before proceeding to clear unused drivers, please adhere to the following points discussed below

  • Do not delete any files from the DriverStore manually.
  • Prior to clearing the Driver Store, it is strongly recommended that you create a system restore point before deleting the Drivers or backup your system image.

Windows Driver Store is located in the folder C:\windows\system32\DriverStore\FileRepository. You may notice that over time, the folder begins to increase more and more and will fill the disk space.

There are numerous ways to have this done, but I will be discussing the following handy steps

Method 1: Delete Obsolete Drivers from the Driver Store

Via Windows Settings (Remove Printer Driver From Print Server Properties): We can remove Drivers from the Driver Store by using the following methods below.

Launch the Windows Settings, click on Devices, and click on Printer and Scanners. Finally, On the right pane of the Windows, click on “Print Server Properties”

This will open up the Print Server Properties window as shown below. Click on the Driver you wish to uninstall.

Next, select Remove, and the following window will be prompted. Select remove driver and Driver packages and press ok.

Method 2: Delete Obsolete Print Drivers from the Driver Store

Delete printer driver using Print Management
– Launch the Control Panel and navigate to the following and click on Administrative Tool as shown below.

Control Panel\System and Security\Administrative Tools

Search through the Administrative Tools and select “Print Management” as shown below.

This will open up the Print Management window as shown below. Expand the Custom Filters branch, and click on All Drivers from the left navigation pane.

Right-click the printer driver on the right side, and then select the Delete option.

You will be prompted to click on the “Yes” button

Method 3: Using the PNPUtil

To delete a driver, you can use the PNPUtil command: Pnputil.exe is a command-line utility that you can use to manage the driver store. You can use this command to add driver packages and remove them as described here.

Note: The driver uninstall package will fail if this file is not an installed OEM INF. 

pnputil.exe -d oemxxx.inf

Alternatively, you could use the command /delete-driver. This command deletes a driver package from the driver store. According to Microsoft, this command is available starting in Windows 10, version 1607.

PNPUTIL /delete-driver [/uninstall] [/force] [/reboot]

Flags:

  • /uninstall – uninstall driver package from any devices using it
  • /force – delete driver package even when it is in use by devices
  • /reboot – reboot system if needed to complete the operation

Method 3: Using Disk Cleanup to Delete Unused Drivers from the Driver Store

Disk Cleanup tool (cleanmgr.exe) that also allows for deleting deprecated updates. To have this done, follow the steps below.

Run Disk Cleanup utility as shown below:
You can use Win+R or “cleanmgr” to open this window up

This will open up the Disk Cleanup for the C: as shown below. Select “Clean up system files”

This will expand the Disk Cleanup option. You will notice a new “More Option” as shown below. Check Device driver packages in the list

As you can see the size is negligible and there is nothing to delete “= ´bytes”

Click on Okay. As you can see, I also selected another option to clear. This is absolutely up to you. Now, the Disk clean-up will delete all obsolete or unused driver versions.

Note 1: AFter performing this operation, be aware that the Rollback driver button in the Driver Properties tab of Device Manage will become inactive.

Note 2: You can also uninstall the printer driver via the Control Panel or Windows Settings through the uninstall program and features wizard.

I hope you found this blog post helpful on how to delete obsolete drivers from the Driver Store in Windows. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comment session.

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Comments (3) on “How to delete obsolete drivers from the Driver Store in Windows”

  1. I installed an INF file manually but this doesn’t explain how to remove it properly from the Driver Store if CleanMgr.exe says 0 bytes and the file is not in the format you suggested. So I have no choice but to delete it directly from there even though you say not to do it that way. Have to look elsewhere. I think the driver was incompatible and I tried to force it to install by using the right-click Install method on the INF directly. The device itself never had the proper driver installed, so this is just an orphaned driver that was never attached to any device.

    1. I found out the answer and it would have been nice if this were explained. All or most INF files are re-named by Windows into an OEM###.INF formatted name.
      When you want to uninstall an INF file you manually installed, you do not know what name Windows assigned to it because that is not the filename you installed.
      To find out the OEM###.INF formatted name, look in the Registry for the INF file you manually installed. It will be accompanied by the OEM###.INF name. Once you’re sure you have the right file (on occasion there can be a file by the same name but there will be other info that you will see like the location of the file you installed), you can then run the command pnputil.exe /delete-driver OEM###.inf (replace the ### with the 3 digits of the file Windows named) and then it will properly uninstall the INF you manually installed.
      BTW, there is a typo in the instruction that gives the command incorrectly with two file extensions: pnputil.exe -d oemxxx.inf.inf
      Also, the syntax of the command does not mention -d but does specify /delete-driver

      1. Dear Steve,

        Thanks a lot for sharing this valuable information with the community. This is very much appreciated.

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