Driver Store Explorer with multiple Intel display adapters

bumboola · 27 Jun 2018

I downloaded the Driver Store Explorer and ran it because I saw that the folder contained 12 Gb which I thought was entirely too much. I was able to delete about 1.4 GB but I have 13 instances of the Intel display adapters, all with the same driver number and release date and taking up close to 10 GB of space. I don't really believe that it is using 10 Gb of storage as I'm only down about 2 GB off my peak free space (6 months earlier) but the Explorer shows that it is. An earlier version of the driver was deleted. My question is that is this normal to have all these entries or could it have been a botched installation when my build changed to 1709 or 1803? I'm hesitant to touch any of them as the display is working perfectly and if something is not broken I tend not to fix it. I do like a lean and clean running PC though and was wondering if any of you have some insight into this.

Thanks

Plankton · 27 Jun 2018

What is the purpose of this "Driver Store Explorer"? Is it really needed?

eLPuSHeR · 28 Jun 2018

It's an useful tool for trimming leftovers for the driver storage. It's also pretty safe to use.

To OP:

A suggestion crossed my mind. Use Wagnard's Display Driver Uninstaller to do a full removal of current VGA driver. Then, before reinstalling latest appropiate driver, run DriverStoreExplorer to remove all older entries for the Intel VGA driver.

Steve C · 29 Jun 2018

DSE is quite useful. Choose "Select Old Drivers", order by size the delete the highlighted old drivers until you have recovered the space you want.

lx07 · 29 Jun 2018

bumboola said:

I don't really believe that it is using 10 Gb of storage as I'm only down about 2 GB off my peak free space (6 months earlier) but the Explorer shows that it is

Nor do I. If you look at your picture you have 10 shown of exactly 748MB and then 3 of exactly 817MB. This seems a bit improbable.

You could try running pnputil -e as another way of looking at installed drivers and/or check with treesize free (or similar disk usage program) to see what is in C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository. It will be easy to check if it is reporting the truth.

My guess is you only have one instance (or perhaps 2) and the driver store explorer is inferring (from reading the actual .inf files which are just tiny text files) that the same actual driver files are repeated. This is only a guess as although I use it I don't know how it works.

I didn't see this issue with the driver store explorer though so make sure you are using latest version - there was a new version (0.8.4.2) released a couple of months ago - see GitHub - lostindark/DriverStoreExplorer: DriverStore Explorer [RAPR]

D4ni3l · 29 Jun 2018

as today v0.9.10 is the last version
https://github.com/lostindark/DriverStoreExplorer/releases/tag/v0.9.10

bumboola · 29 Jun 2018

I am using v0.9.10, the latest one.

I just have one question, if I remove the display drivers completely as eLPuSHeR suggested, will I still have a display?

lx07, I will try what you suggested when I get back to my computer, I believe the files are only a 748MB and a 817MB as that is close to the previous driver install which I deleted.

Thanks

eLPuSHeR · 30 Jun 2018

By selecting Select Old Drives you only delete Old Drivers, the newest one installed is preserved.

freefreeno · 30 Jun 2018

Driverstore Explorer will not let you delete a driver that is use so therefore you could select all those drivers and only the ones not in use will be removed . It is a very safe program that i use on all systems. All those graphics drivers are taking a lot of space .

EdTittel · 04 Jul 2018

All those 4749 items have the same date and the same size. You could select all but one of them and force delete them, and see what happens. I've noticed that sometimes multiple, duplicate copies of Intel drivers get installed especially when using one of their chipset update tools. If you're nervous about doing this, make an image backup before you force delete the duplicates. Then, if it causes problems you can always roll back to the previous image. My best guess is it will work just fine with only one copy.
HTH,
--Ed--