Show me your non-present devices!

Show me your non-present devices!

When I worked as an IT adviser at elementary schools, a part of my work was to take care of old computers, fix the hardware and make the software work faster, so the machines could be reused for educational purposes. In order to make old computers work better I did a lot of small things; revising all background processes and startup applications, uninstalling unused applications, upgrading drivers and applications to the latest edition and so on. The best solution, of course, is the clean installation of the operation system, but for several reasons I couldn't do that. For example, old computers might have some licensed software, but the school staff might loose the installation disk or the license number. Teachers change every three years, and it is hard to trace all of the management history. The only option I had was to clean the software and optimize settings manually. Among many tricks, both efficient and not too good, I found a command to show all "non-present devices" in the device manager (SET DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1). Deleting the history of all devices which were connected to the computer in the past didn't improve the performance of the computer, but it helped to avoid some malfunction when the USB memory or an external disk couldn't be recognized or be accessed. In human terms, computers keep  all memories of all external devices with whom it had been acquainted with in past. Just like people do. And sometimes we apply our stereotypes (or "driver software") to new people that we've met, and we can easily be driven by our old experience without judging new acquaintances properly. Unfortunately, we can't delete our list of "unused devices". But we can laugh comparing computers and human ways of acting.

Just imagine a nice notebook computer (a girl), meeting a new "boyfriend" with 3.0 USB port. "Oh, this is something new! Let me see whether I have drivers for this guy! Oh, no! His spec is something new... OMG, I'm so confused.. He's trying to establish a link, but I don't know. Am I doing it right ? ...I need to contact my manufacturer..."

"Hello, mom! How come I don't have any 3.0 USB ports? Am I so old? Oh, no! How can I communiate with young guys? They say I'm too slow... Can you send me some upgrade? Please! No, I don't like 2.0 USB, it's not cool anymore."

 Or in the case of misjudgement. "Hello, the new external hard drive! Hmm, I think we've met before. Yes, I remember you, the same Toshiba, 320Gb! It wasn't you? Really? God, you look just the same. Anyway, let me see your file system. What's this? Say it again? I can't read this format. Do you speak "NTFS"-ish? Hey, user! What the hell did you connect to me? Don't hit my keyboard! Easy! Don't pull this hard guy out of my port! Maybe we can find something mutual. User! I'm sorry, I'm not a Mac. I wish I were.... Don't sell me!" Alt+F4, Enter, bye...