Windows Vista is the most modern operating system Microsoft has released. Having said that, Vista still must maintain compatibility with older applications and hardware. Over time, the authors of these legacy applications and older hardware may update their products or update drivers that may be needed to make their applications and hardware work with Windows Vista.

Windows Driver Secret

Once you install the upgraded driver, you may think that your problems have been solved. The new driver works, the hardware or software behaves like you think it should and life is good. (Except for one small detail that you may not even be aware of.)

Windows Vista keeps the old driver. On the surface, that may not seem like a dirty little secret, and if that’s the worst thing that Windows Vista does behind your back that’s probably OK. Unfortunately, a collection of old drivers can make life tough on your computer. The truly unfortunate thing is that “old driver problems” may not crop up right away, and it can become difficult to trace exactly what might be causing your troubles.
Fortunately, there are ways to manage your drivers, new and old. Driver Detective can automate the task of managing your drivers. It will search for and install new drivers, and remove old drivers so they’re not able to cause problems later on.

If you want to take a look at your collection of old drivers, Windows Vista gives you a way to do that. You’ll need to get to a command prompt to start.

From the Run box, type

devmgmt.msc

This will open the more user-friendly Device Manager. From the View menu, choose Show hidden devices. You’ll get an expandable tree-branch diagram showing the devices attached to the computer. Unused device drivers should be grayed out in the branch diagram.

Select the grayed out driver(s) and right click to pull up a contextual menu. You can either update the driver or uninstall the old driver. Before you decide that every hidden driver is unnecessary, understand that some hidden drivers belong to devices that you may plug into your computer only once in awhile. If you still plug the device in (could be a USB drive or a removable drive, a MP3 music player, etc.) you’ll want to keep the hidden driver! Using this method, old drivers can be safely uninstalled manually, preventing future problems and conflicts.