How to Disable/Suppress Found New Hardware Wizard in Windows XP

Posted on: August 13th, 2008

Disclaimer: the below procedure has not been approved by Microsoft. Only expert computer users should attempt to perform this procedure and full backup of the system should be made before the attempt.

I ran into a situation where I had to find a way to suppress the windows that kept coming up about having found a new hardware when changing hardware. I Google it but found no real solution to it.

So I did my own research and found my solution:

I traced the window down to the system32\newdev.dll file. This is the Found New Hardware Wizard. Basically all you have to do is rename this file to something else and it won’t bother again. Unfortunately you won’t be able to install new drivers either while this is disabled but you can rename it back to the original file name and it will work again.

Now Windows’ System File Protection will get in the way when you mess around with that file. So you need to do it either in safe mode when the system file protection is not active, or use a Live CD like BartPE / UBCD4win, or just the good old Windows Recovery console.

If you want to know how to disable Windows System File Protection then check this article out

Laszlo