"Found New Hardware" Balloons - Enable or Disable

Brink said:

Hello Gary.

Nar, it will only disable the notification balloon message from appearing. That's all.

To disable automatic driver update and installation, you would need to select the Never install driver software from Windows Update option in the tutorial below instead.

Device Installation Settings

Hi Brink

When you say

To disable automatic driver update and installation, you would need to select the 'Never install driver software from Windows Update' option in the tutorial below instead.

Device Installation Settings

do you only mean that this prevents Windows from finding drivers from Windows Update or does it also prevent Windows from finding drivers on the local hard disk?

Correct this if it is wrong but I read in another forum that if a device is missing drivers Windows 7 automatically starts looking over the hard drive if you're not connected to the internet to find a compatible driver for a device on the PC. When I say a device I kinda mean GPU, as that's the main target of my query now. I feel that this is exactly what windows is doing cos i totally clean my GPU drivers and then windows finds something again and installs it. As I understand, your tutorial Device Installation Settings solves my problem on the online side, but does your tip also prevent Windows from searching for drivers on my local hard disk?

Thanks in advance! Help will be greatly appreciated!

Brink said:

Hello soewhaty, and welcome to Seven Forums.

This tutorial would only enable or disable the Found New Hardware balloon pop-up from displaying whenever a PnP device is first connected to your computer. It doesn't stop it from searching for and installing any new drivers if needed.

The other tutorial is for automatically downloading needed or new drivers through Windows Update or not.

Hi

Thank you for the reply! My question was indeed targetet at the other tutorial, not this one. Could you still answer it, please? :)

As I said:

Correct this if it is wrong but I read in another forum that if a device is missing drivers Windows 7 automatically starts looking over the hard drive if you're not connected to the internet to find a compatible driver for a device on the PC. When I say a device I kinda mean GPU, as that's the main target of my query now. I feel that this is exactly what windows is doing cos i totally clean my GPU drivers and then windows finds something again and installs it. As I understand, your tutorial https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...-settings.html solves my problem on the online side, but does your tip also prevent Windows from searching for drivers on my local hard disk?

Thanks in advance! Help will be greatly appreciated!

Brink said:

That is correct, but the other tutorial is only for allowing Windows to automatically install drivers from Windows Updates. It doesn't stop Windows from searching for drivers in other locations.

OK, thank you for the reply! That is what I was asking. I was exactly asking if your other tutorial prevents Windows from automatically searching by itself in other locations. Sad to hear it doesn't but now I tested it and it seems it does. Back in the days, as I said, Windows used to auto-find drivers somewhere from my PC (I think, but it might have also been from the net) and install them without my knowledge or permission. Now when I followed your other tutorial it kinda seemed it does not do that any more. I set the settings to - Never install driver software from Win Update. So for now it seemed as though it did the trick. Do you concur or I am missing something here? ;-)

Thanks in advance! :)

Brink said:

That is correct, but the other tutorial is only for allowing Windows to automatically install drivers from Windows Updates. It doesn't stop Windows from searching for drivers in other locations.

and so if you say your method from the other tutorial does not solve my problem, then is there another way to STOP AND PROHIBIT Windows from searching for drivers in other locations on my hard disk?

Brink said:

I'm not aware of a way to completely prevent Windows from searching for drivers.

10x! your other tutorial is probably the only way to somewhat achieve that ... it's uncertain as to whether or not it fully prevents Windows from searching elsewhere for drivers. To me it seems that it DOES, but cannot speak for certain. It's only a trial and error situation so far so I dare not say anything big. But since my GPU now does not automatically pick up any of the existing drivers in my hdd, then that makes me think your other tutorial was the key ... who knows.