I can't delete old ethernet devices in device manager

Hi all, I had to replace the ethernet adapter, the one I had in went titsup and the onboard one turned out to be faulty as well, now I can't delete old ethernet devices in the device manager, they have a "packet scheduler miniport" tagged on to the end of them, also other devices have appeared like "Direct parallel", 5 versions of "Wan miniport", a "Microsoft Tun miniport adapter" and "avast! Firewall NDIS filter miniport" also the network connections is up to "Local area connection 7" with no previous connection numbers seen or available! Does anyone have a clue what's going on?
I have disabled all of them and managed to pull up and delete their drivers/registry insertions. All this has done though is give them a yellow explanation mark!
Lastly, when I try to uninstall it, it says "Failed to uninstall, perhaps it is required to boot computer."

 

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/removing-unused-device-drivers-from-windows-xp-machines/6017628

you can use the instructions here, to delete old drivers. or in the old drivers properties box click do not use this device

 

what is the make, model and model number of pc?

what is make of ethernet adaptor?

 

Sorry, the page doesn't come up here!

 

Hi, the model is: HP d530 SFF (It's an old one I know)
The current ethernet adapter is D link DE-528 PCI adapter, the old one I'm trying to get rid of is 3Com Etherlink 10/100 PCI for Complete PC management NIC (3C905C-TX) and the U/S one onboard is a Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet for HP.
Removing the drivers isn't an issue, I have done that already, to no avail, I just cannot understand why the old adapters won't delete from device manager, I think it's linked to the packet scheduler! But where did that come from? The latest thing I have done is installed a trial avast! antivirus, uninstalled it and then went on to install Bitdefender antivirus. could it be that? The avast! Firewall NDIS Filter Miniport, although disabled cannot be removed along with all the other stuff!

 

Follow these steps to view and remove these unnecessary device drivers:

1.Press [Windows]+[Break] to bring up the System Properties dialog box.
2.Select the Advanced tab and click the Environment Variables button.
3.Click the New button below the System Variables panel.
4.In the New System Variable dialog box, type devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices in the Variable Name text box and 1 in the Variable Value text box.
5.Click OK to return to the System Properties dialog box and then click OK again.
6.Select the Hardware tab and click the Device Manager button.
7.In Device Manager, go to View | Show Hidden Devices.
8.Expand the various branches in the device tree and look for the washed out icons, which indicate unused device drivers.
9.To remove an unused device driver, right-click the icon and select Uninstall

These are the instructions from the previous link I supplied.

now in device manager, open the properties for any driver that is not the current ethernet and select Device usage at the bottom and choose to not use this device, that way xp will stop looking for drivers that are not there.

when you uninstall something if you do not uninstall with their own uninstaller you can miss somethings. I hope you uninstalled Avast with their uninstaller or conflicts will arise if pieces of it are still there alongside you new antivirus.

 

as for your network connections now saying 7. I had recently uninstalled my network adaptor and reinstalled and now my network connection has a 2 even though only one network adaptor is listed as installed. When I do a reinstallation it will go back to just showing 1, so even though I have searched for an explanation, my belief is that if any network adaptor is installed after an install of an OS then you will get the next number up, so if you were to uninstall again it would then be at 8. However since there is only one network connection showing then that is all you have.

you can also open a command prompt and type in ipconfig /all then press enter and your network connections will show and it should only be one.

 

Hi Elizabeth23,
Thanks for all your help, I went through the instructions from 1 to 9 (I couldn't pull this up from your link)and found a whole load of hidden devices in all the other sections of device manager, a lot of them were old devices but there were a load of duplicates also! It doesn't look good for the system, do you think I should reload the OS?
I ask because I still can't get rid of the items in the network adapter section!
If I could send you a screen capture in a Word Doc', it could clarify the sittuation, can I?

 

Here's an attachment(I think):

 

no attachment was included.

--------------however----------

I always like to start with a fresh copy of xp about once a year, this clears up all the little tweaks where I may have went too far.

is this a laptop or a desktop?

copy all your data to a flash drive and I will look online for a manual for your pc, if it is a laptop and has never had the drive formatted there is generally a hidden partition to set pc back to how it came out of the box.

or do you have an installation cd?

you will also need to download sp3 and install manually as windows updates will not work without sp3.

going to look for a manual.

 

All I can say is I am glad I do not have an HP!

below is some useful info, for reinstalling, please read all and post back with any questions, but do contact hp as I could not find anything giving the exact instructions on how to reinstall on this pc.

Before You Partition or Format the Current Bootable Disk Ensure that MBR Security is disabled before you change partitioning or formatting of the current bootable disk. Some disk utilities, such as FDISK and FORMAT, attempt to update the MBR. If MBR Security is enabled when you change partitioning or formatting of the disk, you may receive error messages from the disk utility or a warning from MBR Security the next time the computer is turned on or restarted. To disable MBR Security, complete the following steps:
1. Turn on or restart the computer. If you are in Windows, click Start > Shut Down > Restart the Computer.
2. When the F10 Setup message appears in the lower-right corner of the screen, press the F10
key. Press Enter to bypass the title screen, if necessary. ✎ If you do not press the F10 key while the message is displayed, you must restart the computer to access the utility.
3. Select Security > Master Boot Record Security > Disabled.
4. Before exiting, click File > Save Changes and Exit.

http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00709446/c00709446.pdf

user guide

http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00072736/c00072736.pdf

more detailed guide

Shortcut to Temporarily Override Boot Order To boot one time from a device other than the default device specified in Boot Order, restart the computer and press F9 when the F10=Setup message appears on the screen. After POST is completed, a list of bootable devices is displayed. Use the arrow keys to select the preferred bootable device and press Enter. The computer then boots from the selected non-default device for this one time

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...sId=316713&swLang=13&taskId=135&swEnvOID=1093

driver downloads for your pc

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...p?&lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=12454&prodSeriesI

has a contact support link

http://forums.techguy.org/hardware/678915-hp-d530-sff-can-not.html

read this link on reinstalling on an hp

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further note, is everything working ok except for being unable to delete old drivers out of device manager?