Windows 10: Old devices and driver cleanup (one command)

Found this little gem of a command today. Wanted to share it with you. Nice to schedule this as a task running once a month?

Rundll32.exe c:\windows\system32\pnpclean.dll,RunDLL_PnpClean /DEVICES /DRIVERS /FILES [/MAXCLEAN]
For pnpclean output see c:\windows\inf\setupapi.dev.log

PNPCLEAN [/DEVICES] [/DRIVERS] [/FILES] [/MAXCLEAN] [/NOREMOVE] /? /help /h

/DEVICES Removes devices missing for the default time period
/DRIVERS Removes redundant drivers from the system
/FILES Removes files/directories that are no longer needed that are related to devices and drivers.
/MAXCLEAN Performs maximum cleanup
For /DEVICES this will set the time period to 0 so that every missing device will be processed for removal. (Note: Default missing device timeout period is 30 days!!!)
For /DRIVERS this will allow every driver that is not installed on some device to be processed for removal.
For /FILES this currently has no effect on what is removed.
/NOREMOVE Evaluate items only, do not remove

Did some testing and using it without /MAXCLEAN is probably best for using it in Task Scheduler once a month.

Cheers

:)

 

Old devices and driver cleanup (one command)

Found this little gem of a command today. Wanted to share it with you. Nice to schedule this as a task running once a month?

Rundll32.exe c:\windows\system32\pnpclean.dll,RunDLL_PnpClean /DEVICES /DRIVERS /FILES [/MAXCLEAN]
For pnpclean output see c:\windows\inf\setupapi.dev.log

PNPCLEAN [/DEVICES] [/DRIVERS] [/FILES] [/MAXCLEAN] [/NOREMOVE] /? /help /h

/DEVICES Removes devices missing for the default time period
/DRIVERS Removes redundant drivers from the system
/FILES Removes files/directories that are no longer needed that are related to devices and drivers.
/MAXCLEAN Performs maximum cleanup
For /DEVICES this will set the time period to 0 so that every missing device will be processed for removal. (Note: Default missing device timeout period is 30 days!!!)
For /DRIVERS this will allow every driver that is not installed on some device to be processed for removal.
For /FILES this currently has no effect on what is removed.
/NOREMOVE Evaluate items only, do not remove

Did some testing and using it without /MAXCLEAN is probably best for using it in Task Scheduler once a month.

Cheers

 

Old devices and driver cleanup (one command)

Another command to get rid of older drivers (in c:\windows\system32\driverstore) that I used befor in a script is:

For /f %%P in ('dism /online /get-drivers /format:table^|Findstr oem') do pnputil.exe /d %%P

But it is limited to 3rd party drivers and doesn't remove "disconnected" devices. To get that done I used a little util called DeviceCleanupCmd.exe that also can remove "disconnected" devices that are not used within a given time frame.

PnPClean.dll does it all in one command. It is not limited to Windows 10. Windows 2012R2 also has it. But then without the /FILES option.

 

GPU-Z what command line parameter ?

Suggestion: /? (-?) and /help (-help) command-line arguments to show a list of all possible arguments in a small window. *Smile