Does WinXP load driver for device that is not present?

[Jack]

Awhile back I purchased a TV tuner PCI card for my PC. I later decided to
return the card but forgot to uninstall the driver. The card device driver
is not present in the WinXP list of ADD/REMOVE programs, so the only way I
know off to remove the driver would be to have the card and then use the
device manager to delete the driver. Since I no longer have the card, that
is not possible. I'm assuming, that since the card is no longer present on
my PC, that WinXP will not load the driver for it anyway. Is this true? If
WinXP does not load the driver, then I do not need to be concerned about
uninstalling the driver - or so I think.

Thanks,
-Jack

 

[Gary G. Little]

If the driver is a legacy driver and not a PnP driver it may load on boot
up, but it should then fail initialization, given it is a well behaved
driver, either unload or become quiescent.

 

[Pavel A.]

The card device driver
is not present in the WinXP list of ADD/REMOVE programs, so the only way I
know off to remove the driver would be to have the card and then use the
device manager to delete the driver.

No. Boot in safe mode, then all non-present devices are visible in device
manager and can be removed.