How to make windows forget usb device as if I had never plugged it?

MakeW10Great · 07 Sep 2018

Hi!

Windows seems to remember USB devices sometimes. How can I make it forget USB devices? For example if I plug in usb hard drive and I un-assign drive letter manually, it remembers this and does not assign it to this usb hard drive anymore. However, when I plug in another usb hard drive in exactly the same usb plug, it automatically assigns drive letter to it. And when I plug in the usb hard disk which drive letter I manually unassigned it again doesnt automatically mount it.

Where does windows keep that info and how can I delete it? Also is there to make windows not store info about usb storage devices? I mean to make it behave every time I plug some usb storage device (or sd-card) as if I had plugged it for the very first time?

Bree · 07 Sep 2018

MakeW10Great said:

Where does windows keep that info and how can I delete it?

Open Device Manager and click View > Show hidden devices. You will now see every USB drive or SD card that Windows knows about, whether currently connected or not, listed under Disk drives. Right-click on one to uninstal it.

EdTittel · 07 Sep 2018

Uwe Sieber has a great, free utility to clean out stale or absent devices from DevMgr. Works like a charm. See Device Cleanup Tool V0.7.1 on his Tools For Windows page. Use it regularly myself. You can use it to clean everything that's not attached, or work your way through its listings and select exactly what you want to remove.
HTH,
--Ed--

RickC · 07 Sep 2018

Nir Sofer's free, portable USBDeview lets you remove the information that Windows stores automatically in the registry.

There's 2 versions so make sure you download the right one for your system, i.e. the right 'bitness' - x32 or x64. Also, make sure you right-click on the utility and use the Run as administrator option if you are going to be deleting info rather than just viewing it.

To remove info, right-click on an entry and choose Uninstall Selected Devices from the File menu. This will delete the corresponding registry information.

AFAIK there isn't a way to stop Windows from automatically enumerating USB devices when they are attached/detected. It's how Windows works, i.e. by interrogating each new device to learn its capabilities.

Hope this helps...

ddelo · 07 Sep 2018

Further to the excellent suggestions by @Bree, @EdTittel, @RickC above, may I also suggest to download the Microsoft DevNodeClean command line tool, to clean up the orphan shadow volumes left behind by the USB devices that are not currently connected to the system.

To see the shadow volumes currently in your system you have two options:

Option 1
Open Device Manager and click View > Show hidden devices. Then go to “Storage volumes” and expand it.
All volumes in gray color are orphan volumes and can be deleted.

Option 2
Once downloaded the DevNodeClean utility, open an elevated command prompt (Run as Administrator) and navigate to the folder where you have the DevNodeClean.exe file and run this command:

Code:

DevNodeClean /n

The output will be the orphan shadow volumes which have been created by devices not present in your system and can be deleted.

To cleanup all these shadow volumes, from the elevated command prompt, run the command:

Code:

DevNodeClean

This process will not only clear all leftover shadow volumes, but it will also speed up opening of the “Devices and Printers” control panel item.

If you want, you can go back to Device Manager (as in Option 1) and check that no orphan shadow volumes are present anymore.

MakeW10Great · 08 Sep 2018

Tnx for suggestions. coud anyone explain how these utilities work? Do they just automate what I do from "Device Manager" or do the do anything more? I am interested to know how to manually do what these tools do? Are these stale usb devices just some registry keys that are being deleted or just some temp files that are being deleted or what are they?

ddelo · 08 Sep 2018

You can do everything from Device Manager.
The proposed utilities just make simpler and concise what can be done manually with Device Manager and DevNodeClean. If you don't want to use third party utilities, Device Manager and DevNodeClean is all you need.
As for deletion, they delete Registry values.