How To Delete Old Drivers In Windows 10/11

PC users often blame the Windows operating system for eating up GBs of disk space over time. This is because a significant number of Windows users never try to delete temporary files and old files created by the Windows operating system.

Other than deleting temporary files and uninstalling unwanted programs, there are tons of ways to free up disk space in the Windows operating system. It’s just that most users are not aware of these methods.

Deleting the previous version of drivers in Windows 10/11

We have previously talked about deleting Windows.old folder to free up disk space after upgrading to a newer version of Windows 10. In this guide, we will show how you can free up GBs of disk space by deleting old device drivers in Windows 10.

You likely know that Windows 10 automatically installs new device drivers in the background using Windows Update. That is, Windows Update automatically downloads and installs hardware drivers when they are available. When Windows 10 installs a new driver (using Windows Update or other sources), it keeps copies of previously installed device driver packages so that users can restore the previous version of a driver if there is any issue with the new driver.

Fortunately, there is a provision in Windows 10/11 to delete old device drivers without the help of third-party tools. You can delete old Windows 10 hardware drivers in a few mouse clicks to free up disk space.

When you delete old device drivers in Windows 10/11 using this method, Windows 10 keeps the most current version of driver packages and will delete all previous ones. So we advise you to periodically delete old drivers to regain disk space.

Delete old device drivers from Windows 11 installation

Step 1: Launch the built-in Disk Cleanup utility using search.

Step 2: In the resulting dialog, select your Windows 11 installation drive from the drop-down menu.

Step 3: Next, click the Cleanup System Files button to start looking for system files that are no longer required for the smooth functioning of the operating system. This might take a while and you might be asked to select the Windows 11 drive again.

Step 4: Finally, select Device driver packages from the list and then click the OK button. When asked for confirmation, click the Delete Files button.

 

Steps to delete old drivers in Windows 10

Step 1: Open up This PC, right-click on the drive where Windows 10 is installed, and then click Properties.

Step 2: Under the General tab of the Properties dialog, click the Disk Cleanup button to let the tool calculate the amount of free space that you can free up by deleting unnecessary files.

NOTE: If you the Disk Cleanup button is not showing up, please refer to our restore missing Disk Cleanup button guide.

Step 3: When you see the following dialog, click the Clean up system files button.

Step 4: Finally, check the box labeled Device driver packages and then click the OK button.

Click the Delete files button when you see the confirmation dialog to begin deleting old drivers from Windows 10. Simple as that!

You can also free up space by deleting the Windows Update cache in Windows 10.