Ghostbuster

The “ghosted devices”, better known as “hidden devices”, are mostly those devices that were once connected to the computer but were then removed.

The most common of these devices are USB-connected hardware such as mice or flash storage disks. The problem with these “ghost devices” is that Windows saves a copy of them (hence their name) in Device Manager and attempts to initialize them at every system startup. This can eventually decrease the system startup time, especially if a lot of “ghosted devices” are involved. That’s where Ghostbuster comes into play. Ghostbuster is a unique piece of software created to allow multiple “ghosted devices” to be removed at once, in one single and straightforward procedure.

Even though Ghostbuster has a neat, simple and clear interface, it is still not recommended to novices. There are some “Ghosted devices” in Windows that should never be removed; therefore it is better that only computer savvy users that really know what they’re doing should use this application. I personally like a lot the way Ghostbuster lists all the devices, both ghosted and normal ones, as it provides with a simple and neat categorization of them and with some additional basic description for each enumerated device. It also lets you add or remove wildcards, classes or devices and view the more advanced properties of the devices, if available.

In an end note, advanced users in need of dealing with ever increasing number of “ghosted devices” in their systems can rely on this tool to keep this matter under control.