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Hello All,
I just looked at Device Manager on my Windows 8.1 Pro desktop PC and when showed hidden devices I noticed that I have several duplicate entries for the same hardware. Here is a screenshot:
The only thing I can think of that might have caused this was that I just did a clean install of Windows. When the installation was complete I then installed all the drivers that came with my MSI motherboard and some of these drivers were the same and so Windows makes a copy and adds -1, 2, etc. to the name? If the drivers were duplicated why wouldn't Windows just overwrite the old one instead of copying it? Seems to me that would just fill up the registry with excess entries.
Can anyone tell me why these are there and if it's safe to remove the ones that are hidden? More generally, is it safe to remove hidden devices (duplicates or not)?
Thank you,
Jan
I just looked at Device Manager on my Windows 8.1 Pro desktop PC and when showed hidden devices I noticed that I have several duplicate entries for the same hardware. Here is a screenshot:
The only thing I can think of that might have caused this was that I just did a clean install of Windows. When the installation was complete I then installed all the drivers that came with my MSI motherboard and some of these drivers were the same and so Windows makes a copy and adds -1, 2, etc. to the name? If the drivers were duplicated why wouldn't Windows just overwrite the old one instead of copying it? Seems to me that would just fill up the registry with excess entries.
Can anyone tell me why these are there and if it's safe to remove the ones that are hidden? More generally, is it safe to remove hidden devices (duplicates or not)?
Thank you,
Jan
My Computer
System One
-
- OS
- Windows 8 Pro