Put Muscle in Your Device Manager!

In WindowsXP and 2000, the Device Manager is an indispensible tool for keeping your system healthy. There are several different ways to access Device Manger, and they all require at least two steps before the console opens. In order to effectively diagnose problems you should always click the 'view' button and select "show hidden devices".

I've written a small batch file I keep handy on the desktop, that opens Device manager with a simple double-click. Just copy and paste this in Notepad:

set DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1
start devmgmt.msc

Then "Save as type" = "All Files", and name the file "setdev.bat" (without the quotes!).

When the console opens you'll still need to select "show hidden devices", only now you really will be able to see ALL the hidden devices that Windows so dutifully keeps in the registry.

How does that affect performance? Simple; Unless you already are in the habit of keeping things tidied up on a regular basis, every device you've ever installed then later removed will be right there with a greyed-out icon. And every time you boot, Windows has to sort through all that garbage before it can run the devices that actually are installed.

To demonstrate the difference: In the view below is the standard Device Manager on the left, and on the right is the Device Manger opened with the "setdev.bat" file.



On the left you can see nine generic volumes {which represents two hard drives partitioned into four volumes each, and one USB flash drive}. On the right you can see those same nine generic volumes and seven 'hidden' volumes. Those hidden volumes reflect the fact that I recently replaced a hard drive, and repartitioned the remaining drive. This is only one example of what you can clean-up. The same is true for all the rest of the devices.

I'm gonna' get busy and uninstall all this crap!