Win XP Removing Drivers Problem

[Laphan]

Hi All

Put the below in bullet points, can you help??

Can't remove device drivers, which are not used anymore.

Disabled them through the device manager and they have red crosses through
them.

Rebooted many times through this process.

Still will not let you uninstall drivers.

Error message keeps saying need to reboot.

Run up in safe mode and still can't remove them.

Run up in safe boot, but system is not visible to remove them.

The drivers in question are such as an InfraRed driver so they are not
really system related.

How do I remove them??

Help!!

Rgds

Laphan

[LooseChippings]

Give us a clue ...

Which OS Home or Pro?

Service Packs installed?

System Hardware Spec?

Can't remove device drivers, which are not used anymore.

Does that mean they were installed previously?

In Device Manager try 'Remove' instead of 'Disable'.

[Laphan]

WinXP Pro

Service Pack 1 with the latest web updates right upto this morning.

Basically original mboard failed so replaced it with a P4 C800 Deluxe board, as we couldn't get same board as before.

Because this new board already has built-in Ethernet on it there was no need to plug the old card in.

Booted up from existing HD and obviously got the blue screen error. Clicked OK and accepted it.

Windows tech notes say when changing any hardware we should do the following:

Boot up from Windows CD

Choose re-install Windows and NOT 'R' for repair.

When Windows goes through re-install it detects existing Windows and asks if you want to repair this, which it does by removing all of the drivers and re-installing the 'found' ones.

Restarted (everything OK) and went back to MS web site to reapply the 29 updates that it needed to update the system.

Everything fine except that when I go to put in TCP/IP settings into the on-board Ethernet card Windows warns me that the settings are in use by the old card (an SMZ card), which is not physically installed.

This is my exact problem I need to remove this 'card/driver' from the system and I can't.

If I go to Device Manager and click 'Show Hidden Devices' (because it is not installed) you can see the old SMZ card, but if you try to uninstall it Windows brings up a message saying 'Cannot uninstall because Windows may need it to boot system...'. You can disable the card, however when you reboot with the card now disabled you still can't remove it at the 2nd attempt and get the same warning message as before.

How do I get rid of the old card, which has TCP/IP settings attributed to it?

In desperation, I physically installed the old card back into the new board, however doing this makes the Device Manager see this as a new entity and logs it as SMZ Ethernet Card #2. I can uninstall and remove this new entity as many times as I want, but I can't delete the old one.

FYR, the PC is running Service Pack 1 and has all the latest web updates as of this morning.

I've run RegClean, WinDoctor and EZClean and all have come up blank when it comes to this problem.

Does anybody know how to get round this?

Rgds

Laphan

[LooseChippings]

This may help,

Go into the properties for the card and remove ALL the Clients, Services and Protocols.

Reboot if required then remove the card in Device Manager.