Windows 7: Automatic Driver Installation

Just like Vista, I cannot seem to find any way to stop the automatic driver installation. I love how when I uninstall a driver/device in XP, on reboot it pops up asking me what to do. Vista and 7 on the other hand, take it upon themselves to reinstall Microsoft drivers on reboot no matter what I do. I've searched online and yielded no results, and searched here and didn't find anything either (Key words yield many results). Ideally I would prefer Vista/7 to just IGNORE the new device, so I can install the new one/update it myself. But if that can't be done, I'd at least like to be able to STOP the automatic driver installation. Please help

Theres gotta be some way, even if I have to edit something or add registry keys, I just want to stop the automatic microsoft driver installation.

This might help.

If you type 'Device' in the start menu & click Change device installation settings.

Thanks, I actually changed that before you posted but haven't changed any hardware since then (So I wasn't sure if that actually fixed it). If thats the fix then thank you very much! The device shortcut is nice too I didn't know about that.

Nope that was not it, changed my video card and 7 installed a microsoft driver. I hate this damn auto-installation.

It's a shame there's no way to change the default location to search for drivers in the group policy editor, or even to turn it off all together. I'll keep looking

I believe that setting only works for downloading drivers or not.

The drivers already onboard are the ones she likes to keep installing.

If you can find the offenders in here, you can move them somewhere 7 won't look.

\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository

Yea theres 4 nv_disp folders in there

Kind of ridiculous if theres no option to disable this for vista or 7.

Just as a thought, could any of these be of any use in the Group Policy Editor?

Nice find, I see a couple things in the Device Installation Restrictions key for prevention, although it looks like its not going to be as simple and easy as XP. The new hardware wizard popup was so perfect..

Very True, if i knew more about the Group Policy Editor then i'd be able to explain more