Background

Windows remembers all devices which have previously been connected to the system and retains the drivers for those devices such that if the device is reconnected the driver searching and loading process can be avoided. This is a very useful behavior for devices which are commonly connected and disconnected (e.g. USB devices), but it has the side-effect that devices which are used once, or used for a finite amount of time, will forever be remembered by Windows. It is unclear exactly what "remember" means in this context, as I am not exactly sure what sort of storage or pre-loading of the drivers is occurring, but I can confirm that drivers for these "non-present" devices can affect the system, either with compatibility problems introduced by the driver or with performance problems from many accumulated "non-present" devices (Note: I doubt the performance impact is noticeable on all but extreme cases - like replacing your motherboard more than once with different hardware...).

Managing "Non-Present" Devices

The process for viewing these "non-present" devices in Device Manager is outlined in KB315539. They can also be viewed using the Microsoft DevCon utility. In fact, both programs can be used to remove, as well as view, the "non-present" devices. In Device Manager, the devices can be uninstalled just like any other. In DevCon, you must prefix the Device ID with a "@" in order for it to remove the device.

However, neither of these solutions allows for a quick method of removing all "non-present" devices, and on a system with hundreds of such devices this can be a significant hassle. To overcome this difficulty, I have written a script to remove all "non-present" devices which are not legacy or SW devices (since these are often required for other reasons - even when "non-present") using DevCon. The script can also read and write a file listing all devices to be removed (allowing for manual editing of the device list). You can download the script from the Remove Devices project page on the forge.