Removing Drivers from Wizard Hardware Lists (137377)

SYMPTOMS

After you install one or more Windows 3.1 device drivers in Windows, the devices associated with those Windows 3.1 drivers may appear in the Windows hardware lists. These hardware lists appear in the Add New Hardware Wizard that is started by double-clicking the Add New Hardware icon in Control Panel, and in other wizards such as the Add Printer and Install New Modem Wizards.

If Windows includes a driver for the same device for which you installed a Windows 3.1 driver, it may be difficult to distinguish between the Windows 3.1 driver and the Windows driver in the hardware lists.

CAUSE

When you install a Windows 3.1 device driver in Windows, an Oem<n>.inf file is created, where <n> is an incremental number starting at 0. The presence of an Oem<n>.inf file causes the device to appear in the hardware lists.

Because Windows 3.1 setup information (.inf) files do not conform to the Windows setup information file format, Windows may be unable to clearly identify the drivers associated with one of these files.

RESOLUTION

To remove all Windows 3.1 drivers from the hardware lists, rename all the Oem<n>.inf files in the Windows\Inf folder. Doing so does not affect the Windows 3.1 drivers that you currently have installed, but does prevent you from reinstalling the drivers without the original Oemsetup.inf files included with each driver.

To rename the Oem<n>.inf files in the Windows\Inf folder, type the following commands at a command prompt, pressing ENTER after each command:

cd \windows\inf ren oem?.inf oem?.xxx

If there are more than 10 Oem<n>.inf files, you must also type the following command:

ren oem??.inf oem??.xxx

NOTE: Do not use the Oem*.inf wildcard designation in place of Oem?.inf and Oem??.inf. Doing so may cause the wrong files to be renamed.

If you are running Windows 98, the following addtional commands may be necessary if you have added any third-party drivers after the installation of Windows 98:

cd other ren *.inf *.old

These commands remove all third-party .inf files that were added after the installation of Windows 98. The .inf files in the Other folder have names that are related to their source. If you need to restore a specific .inf file, looking in the Other folder for a similar file name may allow you to rename that specific file back to its original name.

If there are no Oem<n>.inf files in the Windows\Inf folder, you can force Windows to rebuild the entire driver information database by renaming the Drvdata.bin and Drvidx.bin files in the Windows\Inf folder. To do so, type the following commands at a command prompt, pressing ENTER after each command:

cd \windows\inf ren drvdata.bin drvdata.xxx ren drvidx.bin drvidx.xxx

After you rename these files, the driver information database will be rebuilt the next time the hardware lists are displayed.

MORE INFORMATION

Windows setup information files can contain a key that identifies the manufacturer of the associated driver, and that distinguishes that driver from drivers included with Windows. This lets you install third-party Windows drivers without creating confusion when you view the hardware lists.

For example, if you have a third-party Windows driver for the Hewlett- Packard LaserJet 4M printer installed, you see two lines similar to the following lines when you view the hardware list in the Add New Hardware or Add Printer Wizard:

HP LaserJet 4 (Microsoft)
HP LaserJet 4 (Hewlett-Packard)