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

Apparently MS use this command themselves in the 'Windows update reliability tool'. But it was applied a little too enthusiastically a year ago resulting in this KB article...

This issue occurs because Windows receives an update reliability tool during a Windows Update installation of KB 4023057. The tool is designed to clean up the INF driver cache as part of its remediation procedures....

...The applicability rules for the Windows update reliability tool have been improved. In addition, the latest version of this tool (10.0.14393.10020 or a later version) should not cause the issue.

KB4098563 | USB device drivers are removed unexpectedly after Windows 10 is updated

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.

I use DriverStore Explorer. This scans and displays all drivers on the PC then you can highlight old drivers and decide whether you want to delete them.