How to clean up numbered devices name?

[Berbe]

In some circumstances, device names appear prefixed wit ha number, like the following screenshot demonstrates:

How do you deal with it in order to remove the number and come back to clean names?

The present situation affects audio devices, but that might happen for any type.

Where to seek for device names?
How do you modify them?

Thanks,

 

[Berton]

Usually deleting or Uninstalling all instances of such duplicated entries then rebooting will reinstall only one instance unless two are actually needed.

 

[Berbe]

Well, intuitively I got the same idea.

I uninstalled all drivers so there was no sound devices at all (the lists were emptied) and reinstalled the new ones.
Fail: the numbered devices reappeared.

I must point out that I took that Windows hard drive from an old machine and put it inside a new one with totally different hardware.
The question there is: how to remove registered hardware which does not exist anymore?

 

[Berbe]

Any idea?

 

[Berton]

You might not be able to remove the 'extras' if both computers had/have Realtek audio devices on their motherboards unless doing a clean re-install of Windows. Such things happen when moving HDDs between machines. Does your audio work at all?

 

[Berbe]

Yeah, everything is working fine.

I removed as much driver as possible (for the ones available for uninstall...) and installed all the suitable drivers for the new hardware. That is where Realtek drivers must collide with each other, with the old hardware still being registered somewhere and thus making my new devices being '2-' numbered.

I had trouble with the graphics (strange stuff such as the Win7 booting screen only covering one half of the screen), but running dxdiag (and probably updating DirectX) put Windows video handling back on track.

I expect trouble when switching HDD from a machine to another (and I am even surprised it works at all that well...), but I also thought it could be possible to clean up eddies with a little manual work.
I am seeking for the recipe here.

Everything is registered in the registry somewhere, is not it. I hust need to know where to tap into it...