Automatic Hardware Driver Installation

[ski]

How do I turn off the automatic installation of hardware
drivers? I am trying to update my video driver which
requires me to uninstall the old driver (so that there is
no video driver installed when I try to install new
ones). When I do this the system must reboot for changes
to take effect, however once it reboots it just goes and
installs a video driver, which defeats the purpose of my
having just uninstalled the video driver (and makes me
very angry at the idiocy of the computer). Again, how can
I tell the computer to either prompt me before such
driver installations or to not automatically install
drivers? Thank you kindly, I am using Windows XP Home
Edition.

 

[davetest]

How do I turn off the automatic installation of hardware
drivers? I am trying to update my video driver which
requires me to uninstall the old driver (so that there is
no video driver installed when I try to install new
ones). When I do this the system must reboot for changes
to take effect, however once it reboots it just goes and
installs a video driver, which defeats the purpose of my
having just uninstalled the video driver (and makes me
very angry at the idiocy of the computer). Again, how can
I tell the computer to either prompt me before such
driver installations or to not automatically install
drivers? Thank you kindly, I am using Windows XP Home
Edition.

It can be tricky. Disconnect from the net, because that
can be accessed. Delete the old INF file from c:\windows\inf
before you reboot. This may stop it.

DAve

 

[William Gower]

Don't uninstall the old driver, just disable it. That's what I did when I
added a new video card to my machine which had an on-board video card.