Viewing and removing missing drivers
To view installed drivers, right-click My Computer and select Properties. When the Properties window appears, click the Hardware tab. Finally, click Device Manager. You've probably seen the basic Device Manager screen before, shown in Figure A.


Figure A
Device Manager displays hardware on your machine.


By default, Device Manager shows you the installed Plug And Play devices. It doesn't show you everything though. You can't see some non-Plug And Play devices and many system level devices. To view them, select View Hidden Devices from the View menu. You'll then see new devices appear, but these still aren't the missing devices.

To view missing devices, close Device Manager. On the Systems Properties page, click the Advanced Tab. Next, click Environment Variables. When the Environment Variables screen appears, click New in the System Variables box.

You'll then see the New System Variable screen. Enter devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices in the Variable Name field and 1 in the Variable Value field as shown in Figure B. Click OK to save the new variable and OK again to close the Environment Variables screen.


Figure B
Set the environment variable to show missing devices.


Click the Hardware tab again and click Device Manager. Select View Hidden Devices from the View menu. You'll now see the Device Manager screen shown in Figure C. This time, you may see new branches as well as devices with icons that are grayed out. Gray icons represent those devices that are missing from your system.


Figure C
Device Manager displays missing devices with gray icons.


To remove a device, right-click a grayed-out device and select Uninstall. Be careful when you do however. Make sure you don't need the device or plan to reinstall it later. If you do need it later, XP will reinstall it at that time.