Disable Drivers using GPO

[Tayyab1212]

Hi

I am trying to find a way to disable certain drivers using group policy. i have tried to use the "prevent installation of devices that match any of these device IDs". It in a way doesn't install it but it doesn't actually disable the driver in a way you would do it on device manager by clicking disable device. it appears as an unknown device. Is there any other way perhaps to do this. I wanted to disable 2 drivers but i managed to get a work around one which was the WiFi driver and i did that by disabling the service for it using GP. The other is the Realtek Audio Speaker Driver. this is only getting disabled in 2 of our classrooms, there is headsets in there and it seems that they keep defaulting to the speaker drivers so rather just disable them. They are brand new Fujitsu small mini factor PCs.

[Oaktech]

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-disable-automatic-driver-updates-windows-10 It's a bit on all or nothing type of thing!

[LeMarchand]

You can do it via the registry, but for 2 devices I would have thought it would be easier to pop down and do it manually.

[Tayyab1212]

Its for 2 classrooms not devices. Rooms with 60 PCs. Any guidance on where to go to do it via registry.

[LeMarchand]

Its for 2 classrooms not devices. Rooms with 60 PCs. Any guidance on where to go to do it via registry.

 

Looks like I failed my reading comprehension. Yeah, don't do 120 machines manually! Scroll some way down here: https://winaero.com/enable-disable-sound-output-device-windows-10/ Might be worth looking at a two or three machines to check they all have the same GUID though. (On reflection, I'm thinking not).

[Tayyab1212]

Works on one PC but as you said different GUIDS as expected.

[LeMarchand]

Might be worth a look at Nirsoft's Sound Volume View which can apparently disable items by name - see https://serverfault.com/a/935395. Can't get to Nirsoft from here, but I suspect you'd need to download just that* (maybe script a copy to each machine) and then add a startup script with the /disable switch.

 

*Just that as lots of their stuff gets flagged as a virus due to its powerful functions that could be used for bad.

[chaplic]

I have a setting to disable all driver installation apart from these, and trial-and-error added keyboards and microbits. Its painful though and it's not retrospective IIRC.

 

Would it not be better to address teh issue directly? Run procmon and fix the issue (e.g. change it back from speaker to headphone)

 

Figure out where it's stored (probably some reg key) then set it to what you want, then remove the permission to SYSTEM to change that key. Once validated can be done via GP or a boot time script.