Windows XP/Vista Speed Up Tweak (remove old device drivers)
Thanks to an article from techrepublic I found one good hint in there which I had never even heard of before, removing old or unused device drivers because they start up with your machine can help to speed up your systems boot times quite a bit. The article is referring to an XP tweak but it works just as well in Vista.
Follow these steps to view and remove these unnecessary device drivers:
1. Press Windows + Break to bring up the System Properties dialog box.
2. Select the Advanced tab and click the Environment Variables button.
3. Click the New button below the System Variables panel.
4. In the New System Variable dialog box, type devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices in the Variable Name
text box and 1 in the Variable Value text box.
5. Click OK to return to the System Properties dialog box and then click OK again.
6. Select the Hardware tab and click the Device Manager button.
7. In Device Manager, go to View | Show Hidden Devices.
8. Expand the various branches in the device tree and look for the washed out icons, which indicate unused
device drivers.
9. To remove an unused device driver, right-click the icon and select Uninstall.