Windows Vista™ Inside Out

Enabling and Disabling Individual Devices

Installing and uninstalling device drivers can be a hassle. If all you want to do is enable or disable a specific device, you can do so from Device Manager. Select the device and click the Disable button on the Device Manager toolbar or right-click the device name and then click Disable from the shortcut menu. If a device is already disabled, both of these options toggle to Enable. The drivers for a disabled device remain available, but Windows does not load them.

You might choose to disable the driver for a device if all of the following conditions are true: you use it infrequently (or never), the device cannot be physically removed, and you want to avoid having it use resources or cause stability problems. ...