Show ghost devices in the Device Manager
- Open a command prompt (cmd.exe) with administrator rights
- Set the special environment variable with this command:
SET DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1
- Start the Device Manager with this command
devmgmt.msc
- In the Device Manager enable Show Hidden Devices in the View-menu
Permanently make the Device Manager show non present devices
Instead of having to open a command prompt every time, then one can make the environment variables permanent, so the Device Manager will always show non-present devices when choosing Show Hidden Devices.Set the environment variables by adding the following STRING values to the registry:
More Info MS KB241257[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SYSTEM \CurrentControlSet \Control \Session Manager \Environment]
DEVMGR_SHOW_DETAILS = "1"
DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES = "1"
More Info MS KB304514
More Info MS KB310126
More Info MS KB315539
Credits regedit.com
"Ghost devices can cause slow boot and other erratic behavior because Windows tries to communicate with a device which isn't there."
Proof?
I would totally agree with “Ghost devices can cause slow boot and other erratic behavior because Windows tries to communicate with a device which isn’t there.”
I've worked with MS Support on issues for example with Direct Access which were affected by Ghost NICs. Great article SnakeFoot...Thank you.
Thanks for this. However, I did this and accidently uninstalled the touch screen driver, so it is not appearing anymore, even after proceeding with the show ghost devices method (Windows 10)
How can I get it back?