What If You Delete ALL the Drivers in Windows 11?

[@ThioJoe]

Thanks to Privacy.com for sponsoring another video! • Protect your financial identity online with Privacy .com by using unique virtual cards, and get $5 off your first purchase at ⇨ privacy.com/thiojoe

[@Gautam-tk8tf]

12 hrs ago wtf

[@moneymoney122]

@@Gautam-tk8tf you can schedule a video to go public from private, when it’s private only he can view and comment on the video

[@TFKI]

E

[@TamilSwampertOwner]

Dont update youtube app in android because it shows dislike count and at this when i comment the video there are no dislike in this video

[@jes3d]

mm

[@srivatsavm3892]

Imagine you're the computer and someone starts deleting your drives. It will be like removing your -nerves and muscles- memories one by one ☠️

[@Blankult]

Except it would be like damaging your brain so it would still be able to use the nerves' input until you went to sleep, then your brain would reset and it wouldn't know what to make of the inputs, effectively reducing you to the capabilities of a newborn baby, probably worse.

[@KatyaAbc575]

The computer is still fine. Unless you physically tamper with the hardware, this comparison does not hold up. The operating system is really just a standadised way for the software to interact with the hardware. So messing with it, is like giving somebody unclear instructions. Which might be annnoying, but is not cruel in of itself.

[@geraldgomes]

@@Blankult I was thinking the same as you. It's like deleting memories one by one.

[@144pbiz]

lol

[@Dr_Steal_Computer]

@@Blankult thats dementia

[@rlwalker2]

Adding a RESTART after each series of file deletes would probably have shown more dramatic changes. I think you nailed it when you said the drivers are probably loaded into memory so file deletes would have little or no impact until a restart.

[@chlorobyte_projects]

What if instead of simply deleting the files, you corrupted them instead? As in mixing some of the binary data up to see what happens, say with Vinesauce ROM corruptor (which works on any file). Windows just crashing at the end is boring. I want to see it actually burn.

[@rewindd]

windows probably wont be affected by it and would just stop working

[@DorperSystems]

Corrupting them would cause them to be unable to load because the checksums and signatures would be invalid.

[@annarkhi]

You want to see the computer burn instead of crash?? Not gonna happen by corrupting the files, sadly. If you want to see the computer burn, try burning down your home.

[@rewindd]

@@annarkhi maybe try gasoline

[@SSJfraz]

Nothing would happen as the drivers are loaded into RAM on system start up. So the PC will continue to function normally, regardless of how the drivers stored in ROM are manipulated. Manipulating the binary data in RAM however could make for some interesting results.

[@merbudd]

"Obviously not something you should do at home" Me: well, time to go to the school i guess!

[@gFamWeb]

A lot of the drivers were likely loaded in the RAM of the process. Ending it removed all the drivers for good.

[@JosamaBinBiden]

Can confirm.

[@stephenhall3515]

Exactly. TJ's checks at various points were therefore reading from RAM.

[@nintendo-toasteredition]

Stopping them at ram or task manager will definitely wreck it 💀💀💀💀

[@RastaJediX]

Yeah, at beginning of video I was like "but all of the drivers are loaded in memory...". Still enjoyed the video however!

[@windowsxpprofessional]

I tried this on 7 pro about 2 years ago and fixed itself witth no problem 🐱

[@skelebro9999]

nice

[@pog16384]

Noice

[@logical...]

🐱

[@AmauryChihuahua]

oh my god

[@windowsxpprofessional]

@Flick EVERYWHERE

[@DalmationProductions]

1:58 actually device drivers are actually a computer program that allows your computer to communicate with the devices

[@ThioJoe]

Isn't that what I said

[@salah465]

@@ThioJoe yes'nt

[@DalmationProductions]

@@ThioJoe yeah but in a different way

[@quarts5519]

@Aristide BAUCHART not me doe hehehe

[@minecraftify95]

@@ThioJoe :ThioJoeThonkang:

[@magnox72]

Yes, Window loads drivers into memory at boot so deleting the files might not have an immediate effect. This reminds me of a similar issue I had some time ago, with a 'user'. For some reason he had local admin rights on his machine. He had seen all the anti-trust stuff around Microsoft at the time. So, believing Microsoft was spying on him, he opened Regedit and went about deleting every reference to Microsoft. As you can imagine, his machine didn't live long.

[@EricCorsi]

This sounds right. It is also why one can zero out the partition table and you will not notice it until you reboot. Simply put, it is stored in memory.

[@SilentProti]

This user is the kind of person Mac exists for.

[@gmdrandom6287]

@@SilentProti no. He deserves chrome os

[@TheSultan1470]

HAHAHHAHAHHA

[@mikem9536]

Sounds like something I did when I was about 10 and decided to delete DOS files that you couldn't run from the command line, lol.

[@MsMiDC]

For people who dont know, System32 is still called that for compatability reasons as a lot of programs are hard coded to that path. WoW64 however is acutally named like that because it stand for "Windows 32-bit On Windows 64-bit" as it is the subset of windows capable of running 32-bit applications on a 64-bit machine. So the name System32 is outdated, but it has to be called that to not let everything break down.

[@JoaquinPro64]

6:33 "Virtual Studio Code" my favourite program

[@hamzaodt3515]

😂😂😂😂😂he was talking faster than the speed of light

[@jenblox6882]

ThioJoe: Dont Try This At Home Me: OkAy I dO ThIs oUtSIdE

[@Ninotipinoti]

Do i get more FPS from doing this?

[@HyZpix_shorts]

yes

[@lollygagger1]

​@@gfbytebeat2100ljs do NOT listen to this person, they are lying. The answer is obviously yes

[@kafigan]

yep

[@Low_Qualitizer]

Yes ignore GLF

[@gfbytebeat2100ljs]

Yes

[@itsjavii991]

ThioJoe: "so we might break it" Also ThioJoe: It should be fun!

[@JGFXDK]

Hardware drivers for sure are loaded into RAM upon boot. The system naturally should not be looking on the non volatile drive for drivers every time an interrupt occurs. Deleting the source does not do anything until you reboot, but I guess you figured that out. Actual system files is a different matter. They get loaded as per needed and some (quite a few indeed), based on complexity and range of functionality are accessed on the disk during operation, in order to minimize RAM consumption.

[@asialsky]

Although, it is possible to force a driver to reload. If you press Ctrl+Shift+WIN+B, you can force Windows to manually restart your graphics driver. This is useful for if a fullscreen game crashes and holds the system hostage.

[@kennystrawnmusic]

Re: 3:25 - if I recall correctly, the .sys files are actually statically linked to the kernel, not dynamically linked as a DLL would be. That’s definitely true with .ko (kernel object) files on Linux, most of which are also device drivers.

[@surajitsadhya]

0:10, Alright, I'm gonna try this on a virtual computer, Also Joe is a better computer teacher than the teacher at my college

[@Blankult]

Joe is not a teacher, so it just goes to show how garbage those teachers are

[@surajitsadhya]

@@Blankult yes as I really like watching content on KZbin than spending time at school but the teachers are not terrible I just don't feel interested

[@Blankult]

@@surajitsadhya That makes sense, but in my case i've seen teachers that were just really bad. One teacher told my entire class that the cmd on windows is the MS-DOS, not that it's similar, she said it was DOS and put that on the exam lmao It was a question like "what is the cmd?", i put the actual definition, a command line interpetrer, and the next time she explained it she used the same definition i gave on the exam, as if she never said it was DOS lmao

[@chlorobyte_projects]

@@Blankult On really old versions of Windows, that was sort of correct. That was when Windows was just running on top of DOS and the command prompt just let you access a regular DOS prompt. Doesn't change that a lot of teachers have no idea what they're talking about though.

[@Blankult]

@@chlorobyte_projects I know that's true. Windows 95 and 98 had DOS i think, but she was trying to tell me that the cmd.exe on XP and onwards was still the same MS-DOS lol

[@ushanbimsara7892]

Do a one on "What if you delete registry folders" I think that could boost up your viewers.

[@ThioJoe]

I actually did do one like that

[@ushanbimsara7892]

@@ThioJoe oh I guess I missed that one🤔

[@andreacorrea5921]

@@ThioJoe give lInk

[@Dayreaverthe_Theo]

@@andreacorrea5921 i gave the link bro

[@Dayreaverthe_Theo]

btw the link i gave was a troll lol

[@vizzair]

drivers are loaded into memory ( usually at startup ) and remain active even when you remove the actual files, but when you reboot ! bam the system boot process cannot find anything to load.

[@Arokhantos]

If every single device is not unknown device i am gonna be disapointed

[@Lampe2020]

5:01 Why was there German (de_DE) preinstalled on Win11 that's been English since it was programmed and never set to German? Or did I misunderstand something?

[@bernardo-x5n]

Operating systems usually include language files for every (or most) languages it supports so if you switch language to german, it does not have to download. Language files are tiny, so it is worth it.

[@kingdedede7]

The only driver I've messed with was the touchscreen, I had to disable it because my screen got cracked and trying to use my laptop would be very annoying to use.

[@mrmeep2047]

I mean you could just not use the touch screen

[@kingdedede7]

@@mrmeep2047 the screen was cracked and was creating pressure points which was activating the touchscreen. Also I've only used the touchscreen once.

[@pyp2205]

Well the only drivers I've messed with, was the Bluetooth and Keyboard driver. Because Bluetooth didn't seem to work for some reason. But uninstalling it would fix it. Because Windows would reinstall it on system start up. After rebooting, Bluetooth started to work properly. The keyboard driver had the same problem, and solution only it was on an old Windows 10 laptop that now has Linux installed (it stopped getting Windows 10 updates, so I decided to use it for experimental use).

[@pyp2205]

@@mrmeep2047 I have 2 touch screen laptops. And I'll admit that I don't really use the touch screens much. I do use it, but it depends on what I'm doing.

[@peppigue]

@@kingdedede7 I just did this yesterday on a laptop at work that has seen some mechanical impact. Disabled the device in windows, but it still works in the bios menu. Slightly baffled by this, that the touchscreen functionality is so low level. HP ProBook (440 G6 I think) if anyone is curious.

[@windowsfan95]

Video idea deleting as many files on windows as possible, while still keeping it partially usable.

[@LandonEmma]

If you didn't know, Video Game Consoles also have drivers, all of them are hard burned into the system except for the Wii, which has something identical to drivers, called IOS (Input Output System) if your Wii is modified you can actually delete this files. You can also replace an IOS with a modified IOS so that your Wii could read DVDs or burned Wii ISO.

[@unnamedscribble-auttp]

ohh that's why i saw a vid that was like "installing ios on wii" i was so confused when i saw it (i thought it meant the ios from apple)

[@dsaints2344]

The funny thing about deleting drivers in modern windows, is that given that a lot of them don't need to be in constant execution or in open communication with whatever task they are required to, so, the OS won't crash or behave weirdly until you try to do something specific.... But, man, when he deleted the .Net folders, I was watching a developer's nightmare...

[@lucky_lol]

What does it do tell me about it !!

[@winindowsdows]

.NET files are basically newer versions and more advanced versions of INF files

[@winindowsdows]

And they do more stuff in modern windows

[@anxiousearth680]

@@winindowsdows what are inf files?

[@winindowsdows]

@@anxiousearth680 info files

[@josir1994]

driver is the interface between hardware and software, but you try to see if there's any problem by opening some random programs and have nothing to do with hardware at all

[@SSJfraz]

Yes, the drivers are loaded into RAM on boot up and contribute a fair bit to the 2GB or so of memory that is reserved to the Operating System.

[@syth-1]

It lasted that long because most of them were already loaded into memory - iirc there’s also a way to unlink running files allowing you to delete them even if they are being ‘used’ or so to speak

[@undeniableheck1361]

I saw the title and i literally said out loud, "I NEED TO WATCH THIS"

[@realczcx]

It’s called VISUAL studio code not virtual

[@muhsin_sultan]

Loading in use drivers in memory sounds like a no brainer when u think about it, saves time and devices become responsive, tho the average person is likely to commend the manufacturer and not Microsoft for this

[@madbanana22]

If you delete all the drivers, you'll not be able to travel in the car

[@seydougueye6816]

nice joke

[@littlek3000]

3:10 windows is such a backwards and terrible operating system, I mean they even use back slashes for their file explorer and terminal commands. I like to think that windows thinking backwards, while other OSs (that use forward slashes, which is pretty much every single one that isn't windows) are thinking forward.

[@itsmexpert]

1:43 "Prepare to become an expert"

[@itSinger]

That reminds me when I was a kid a started deleting folders in c to make room for my games xD So the OS doesn't immediately crash cuz it's already loaded in memory, but ram is volatile, so bad consequences show when trying to reboot. That's the key point.

[@TurpInTexas]

I think you just proved what we have all known for years. Windows is extremely bloated and has a lot of unnecessary code filling up the drive.

[@michaelepica3564]

..... did you not see the fact that it immediately crashed when booting up?

[@ashisharky]

Did you miss the part where windows couldn't boot up afterwards?????

[@justinleong2589]

That is why some Apple fans claim windows is "not stable" due to the fact that user can simply delete important files intentionally that causes system crash.

[@Niosus]

MacOS will also let you do that, although you do need to reboot to disable "System Integrity Protection". But the process on Windows isn't exactly easy either. Taking ownership of system files can be quite tricky. I don't know about the files specifically, but stuff installed by the Windows Store or Xbox app is notoriously hard to remove manually.

[@chlorobyte_projects]

To be fair, Windows *is* a lot less stable than Mac or Linux, but... this is not the reason why.

[@bernardo-x5n]

Then Linux is the most unstable operating system ever. One "sudo rm -rf /" and most stuff is gone

[@chlorobyte_projects]

@@bernardo-x5n Damn, better install MacOS on my servers! I need that stability!

[@safetyzone2962]

@@bernardo-x5n You need a password for that command. On Windows you don't need a password if you are already in, but if you have a Mac then you need one regardless because you have to reboot in order to do it.

[@InterlacedTech]

Basically deleting the drivers will stop everything except the cpu, HDD, memory and kernel. But the usb hubs will stop if the bios is legacy

[@cometthemountainlion181]

The Windows installation destruction vids are the best

[@Bastispark]

Everything that is connected by USB usually provides their own drivers.( == Plug&Play) That's why the whole "Bad-USB" debacle happened 5-10 years ago. USB-Peripherals have a small ROM which provides Meta- & Driverdata

[@mariojpalomares2514]

The way windows handles drivers is just weird coming from team Microsoft. On a linux distro. You can delete the whole /usr/lib/modules and reboot. It will still boot up but your hardware will start behaving strange. Like the mouse touchpad will become extra sensitive when moving the mouse. Or how about you may lose audio. The reason why your system still works is because your Linux distro stores its drivers inside of the linux kernel's init ramdisk and gets unpacked every time you boot up your machine. The /usr/lib/modules are its extensions of the kernel's core drivers. This is so it makes it easy to update the modules without having to rebuild the kernel. Although you can delete the kernel is one way to delete the drivers. But the issue there, you also deleted the kernel, so don't reboot lol. And even then, you can put it all back and it will reinstall its modules and it be like nothing has happened. No data loss, no reinstalling the whole os either. This is where the true differences really begins to show when comparing windows to linux. Heck, just the way a linux distro updates stuff, that alone blows away windows update many times over hands-down. Its simply too seamless that i had to turn off auto updates just to see the packages that are about to be updated lol.

[@uncleriktovan]

Hey I noticed you blur text by pixelating the information. I don't know if you know this but there has been decent amount of work done with machine learning in de-pixelating text. I know it's pretty niche and nothing's perfect but I just want to bring some light to this.

[@lucky_lol]

Timestamp?

[@svetlanavoitushenko6018]

At first I thought: we shouldn't delete the mouse and/or keyboard drivers so you can operate in the system while deleting others

[@Zylops]

8:10 - There's this thing thats part of the PowerToys library that basically lets you right click a file and see what process is using it, its called "File Locksmith"

[@ultraali453]

I remember deleting system files for fun back in the day (probably Windows 98) because I had to keep reinstalling Windows. I wanted to have some fun before I had to reinstall it and install all the drivers etc.

[@alfonss_]

I like the new, unique video format!

[@Lizuma]

Neat this came out recently since I just got a new graphics card and needed to install the driver for it

[@RossComputerGuy]

The reason why the OS didn't crash is how modern OS kernels, the actual software that runs everything in an OS. Linux, Windows NT, and most likely macOS/Darwin tend to load drivers into memory. This means deleting the source file doesn't cause the driver to be removed from memory since the driver needs to be in memory to work. This is why rebooting didn't work since when the NT kernel tried loading the drivers, the files didn't exist so none could be loaded into memory.

[@arlenham]

you can just do ctrl + a to select everything in that specific folder, no more holding or shift click needed

[@PearComputingDevices]

I like the concept here. But it would be nice to have a utility that cleans up the driverstore since that directory can ballon without ever actually using the drivers stored within. Now obviously you would want to do this intelligently as your not always needing USB device drivers for things, let alone safe mode drivers but they would be prudent to keep. But driver packages for graphics cards not installed might be a good candidate for clean up.

[@peterburbery2341]

Could you ever break the hypervisor of a virtual machine by deleting the system files in a way that would negatively impact your computer?

[@u1f98a]

Simply destroying the system (unless you have stuff like shared folders) by deleting files won't cause any negative impact to your actual computer, but it is theoretically possible (not at all common in actuality) for malware to escape the hypervisor.

[@zkiller1236]

i would've done it differently: pause vm mount virtual disk to windows delete folders unmount virtual disk unpause

[@VinexAesthetics]

My man's back with another classic

[@itstheV01D]

what i think microsoft should do is for drives that are 200gb+ there should be a partition that just has the normal windows files on it just in case your windows files gets messed up you can use those other windows files to replace the broken ones

[@jaredhume4731]

I am curious what happens when you delete all windows files and then try to go to Windows update and try to get them all back

[@mrsparsh8]

THIS IS WHAT I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR LETS DO THIS!

[@anno_nym]

9:59 I think, when you delete drivers, you delete files, that are necessary for the video connection of the VM. So ending that process just stopped the video connection...

[@lucky_lol]

Dude it was there, as we can see other stuff

[@legome3431]

i love the "what happens if you delete" series!

[@Zenvitic]

"I have a bad feeling closing that down will cause an issue" - the man deleting all the drivers on windows

[@ElemonAdventures]

I tried it out. I have a bunch of free cars now

[@markusTegelane]

They should rename System32 to SystemNative or something, because the files stored on that folder depend on the current processor architecture. They should, but most likely can't for backwards compatibility with batch scripts and stuff like that.

[@pacomatic9833]

I mean, they could use a SymLink (Theo made a video on that too)

[@matsGT]

do a video "what if you wipe the whole hard drive"

[@Rczvr]

😂

[@eman_plays]

ThioJoe: Don’t try this at home Me: Goes to Walmart and tries it

[@avrahamhollander9296]

This is dumb. You can't delete loaded driver files while the system is booted into the OS. You have to boot off of another medium, and then delete the drivers. Then you can delete drivers such as the AHCI driver, which will make the system no longer bootable. The bootloader will load the kernel, and then it will BSOD because it can't mount the filesystem without a driver. You could also delete the basic VGA driver. Then you will have no video output at all.

[@jadhal9280]

Sir I have multiple os I can delete from first os driver from second os . And check from first if drivers and not present . But system does not boot or boot in safe mode min drivers and min support.

[@nickdibart]

Where can you find info on that registry tweak to take ownership?

[@Luke_skysleeper]

what virtual mashine do you use ??

[@WhiskersVR]

VMware

[@ZerickKilgore]

There are some problems with the closed captioning where "quotes have raw HTML formatting".

[@Nick12_45]

You're probably just trolling, never encountered that issue before

[@ZerickKilgore]

@@Nick12_45 I wish I was.

[@FBIagentObama]

How did you add a “take ownership” button to the right click menu? Please make a video on how to add that and other stuff to the menu

[@W1nd0w55]

You can use Winaero Tweaker for that

[@normalperson314]

The Fitnessgram™ PACER Test is a multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets harder as it continues.

[@simplybeanjelly]

That weird freeze scrolling thing happens in windows 10 too. It's just a weird bug in windows

[@adityakashyap6424]

4:52 can you share that registery tweak?

[@yzapre]

you can use ctrl + a to select all files in a folder

[@tatethegamer9]

Notice how the rounded corners went away shortly after he started deleting stuff

[@n0viewers409]

Restarting a pc is the key to witness change, when you reloaded the checkpoint you should have deleted all but that one thing then restarted and seen what the os was doing.

[@NinjaPheonix26]

5:53 This always happens to me! Every time I scroll down to the end of the Window, it just keeps on scrolling! This could probably end up in me deleting precious files!

[@TheSwagNinja49]

4:51 how do u get that registry tweak?

[@someone4229]

I don't know why you don't use it, but you could press CTRL + A to select everything

[@Tntdruid]

You get a free downgrade to windows 10 if you do that 😂

[@pumpkinspicelatte2491]

Your channel has grown from being a stupid prank nonsense to a very interesting one 👍

[@mtranchi]

what about if you pull the plug on your computer during an update?

[@rutujrunwal3579]

The WD folder can be deleted if you turn off the tamper protection in Windows Defender settings

[@RestlessCash649]

So what Is virtual Machine are you using

[@Twisted_Code]

… Did you expand the loc in "inf_loc" as "location" instead of "localization"?

[@b4ttlemast0r]

PowerToys has a utility called "File Locksmith" that shows which processes are using a particular file

[@AlkoholOgerLeonElektronik67]

You could use something like psexec to get system permissions to get around the issue with permissions or Unlocker (dunno if that one is system, only deletes during boot)

[@ThioJoe]

yea i've found the 'take ownership' registry tweak works the easiest

[@Nickwilde7755]

@@ThioJoe where did you get it? The one I found didn’t change the right click menu

[@DigitalIP]

Should have had the task manager up to see what the system was doing while doing all that.

[@realnoscope]

What happens if you disable 'System Firmware' in Device Manager, not a video idea I'm just curious

[@ThatWindowsGuy488]

5:53 you’re not alone. As a Windows 11 user. This happens to me too! And I use Windows 11 on a real machine!

[@ImAbhishek3721]

I had a lot of fun thank you!!😄😄😄 and you are cool😉

[@jatinchaudhary-s2t]

I was literally studying dude You made me distract Whatever the video was awesome👀

[@Cart1416]

6:33 Virtual Studio Code instead of Visual Studio Code

[@TomGreene]

Linux Kernel is like. Got you fam. No long ass videos. Just got you covered.

[@MohammedVerda]

make a video on what happens if you delete bluetooth drivers or create a short about it

[@RodCoelho]

Can you do a video on what to do if a hacker corrupts the drivers including the ones in the backup folder, how would you go about fixing it? Can you restore the originals again from the CD?

[@4555gfgf]

I'm addicted to these

[@antonaparin]

6:30 Run Virtual Studio Code?

[@fiscalglint4563]

Hello Thio! I am your new follower!

[@Bambi-zr7tu]

Theojoe:deletes all drivers Windows:” mr bill gates I don’t feel so good “

[@ggme4682]

Love this one TOO and I subscribed!

[@patchworkproductions7998]

Gday Joe first off thanks for the consistently informative and entertaining videos. I'm a 40y.o noobie only taking interest in computers in the last 2yrs. And I regret taking so long because I haven't been this excited to learn in a long time. Long time. I do know video/audio production though and mate imo your a natural in front of camera. Did it come easy to you or was it a steep curve like the one I'm on ATM? Thanks again I've picked up so much useful information from your channel