duplicate drivers in Win10: which to delete?

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I downloaded a copy of Device Rescue per one of the latest newsletters. I always like to learn more…but now I have more questions. I have a lot of extra drivers, or so it seems. In searching the archives, I found Susan recommended Driver Store Explorer, so I ran that to see how the two utilities compared.

Attached is a copy from both programs for the Human Interface Devices. How do I tell which to keep and which to delete? Or do I just leave them all?

 

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Is your computer working okay?  if so, none of them.  Just because drivers are there doesn’t necessarily mean you need to remove them.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

2 users thanked author for this post.

LarryK, satrow

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Thank you. That was my first thought, but wanted to check with those more experienced. My system is not having problems; since “it ain’t broke, I won’t fix it!”

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@LarryK

if you have ample space on your SSD drive, there’s no need to remove any duplicate drivers for Human Interface Devices since those take up very little space.

it would be an entirely different story if there were duplicate graphics/video drivers from Intel, nVidia or AMD on your system in which those such drivers take up tons of space and those old graphics driver versions DO need to be removed (from the “Display adapters” section of Driverstore Explorer) and only keeping the latest or recent version of the graphics drivers.

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That’s helpful to consider. Driver Store Explorer does give sizes for drivers, so I can see the Human Interface Devices do indeed take up little space. It also has “Select Old Driver(s)” button–interesting, because I was wondering how to tell which are considered “old.” It selected 40 drivers at 392 MB. Some of them are from TeamViewer, which I uninstalled a while ago (but the inf files remain…). I assume they are safe to delete? As for the others… better let them be, I suppose.

Attached is a screen shot of some of those “old drivers…” Do I just hit delete? Or some kind of uninstall?

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