How to Completely Uninstall vJoy (Including Driver Store Leftovers)

A normal uninstall removes the vJoy application, but a complete uninstall also deals with the part most guides skip: copies of the driver package that Windows keeps in its driver store. Those leftovers are why a reinstall sometimes behaves like the old installation never left, and why a machine that has hosted several vJoy builds can keep producing confusing driver behaviour. This guide shows the full procedure in the right order: uninstall through Windows Settings, reboot, find any remaining Shaul or vJoy OEM INF packages with pnputil, remove them deliberately, and confirm in Device Manager that the system is genuinely clean before you install anything again.

When a complete uninstall is worth doing

Most users never need this depth. Do a complete uninstall when you are switching between builds and strange behaviour survives a normal reinstall, when a feeder reports the driver is not enabled even after reinstalling, when the driver version and DLL version seem haunted by an older release, or when you want vJoy off the machine permanently with nothing left behind. The documented cleanup pattern for stubborn vJoy installs is exactly this shape: uninstall, inspect the driver store, remove the leftover OEM packages, reboot, and only then reinstall a matching build. Skipping straight to reinstalling over the mess is how the mess becomes permanent.

Step 1: Uninstall through Settings and reboot

  1. Close every game, simulator and feeder. A running feeder can hold the interface open and interfere with removal.
  2. Open Windows Settings, go to installed apps, find vJoy, and uninstall it.
  3. Follow the uninstaller to completion. If it offers choices, choose full removal rather than repair.
  4. Reboot the PC. This is not optional decoration: driver removal finishes across a reboot, and the driver store check below is only meaningful afterwards.
  5. After the reboot, open joy.cpl. A vJoy Device should no longer be listed. If one remains, continue with the driver store steps.

Step 2: Find leftover packages with pnputil

Windows stores installed driver packages in the driver store under generated names like oem42.inf, and pnputil is the built-in tool that lists and removes them. Open an administrator command prompt or Windows Terminal. Run pnputil -e to enumerate the packages in the store. Read the list carefully and look for entries whose provider or description names Shaul or vJoy. Write down the exact published name, the oemXX.inf value, for each matching entry. There may be more than one if several builds were installed over time. Do not remove packages from other providers, and do not guess: the published name in your own pnputil -e output is the only safe identifier, because the number differs on every machine.

Step 3: Remove each vJoy OEM INF

  1. For each vJoy or Shaul entry you identified, run pnputil -f -d oemXX.inf, replacing oemXX.inf with the exact published name from your list.
  2. The -d switch deletes the package and -f forces removal even if a device still references it, which is why feeders and games must be closed and the normal uninstall done first.
  3. If pnputil reports a package is in use, reboot once and run the same command again before doing anything more drastic.
  4. Run pnputil -e a second time and confirm no Shaul or vJoy packages remain.

Take this step slowly. The driver store holds packages for hardware you own and use, from graphics drivers to USB devices, and pnputil will happily remove what you tell it to remove. The protection is your own reading: only the lines that name Shaul or vJoy belong to this job. If the list is long, save the pnputil -e output to a text file first so you have a record of the machine’s state before you changed it. That record is invaluable if you later need to explain or reverse what happened.

Step 4: Check Device Manager

Open Device Manager and look through the human interface devices and sound, video and game controllers sections for any remaining vJoy device entries. After a complete uninstall and reboot there should be none. If a ghost entry remains, right-click it and uninstall the device, ticking any option to delete its driver software if Windows offers one, then reboot again and re-check. Also confirm in joy.cpl that no vJoy Device is listed. When Device Manager, joy.cpl and pnputil -e all agree that vJoy is gone, the machine is clean. A fresh install at this point starts from a known state, which is the entire purpose of the exercise.

Common mistakes

  • Deleting files by hand. Never go hunting through system folders deleting driver files or registry entries manually. Settings uninstall plus pnputil is the supported shape of this job.
  • Removing the wrong OEM package. Match on the Shaul or vJoy name in the pnputil output, never on the oem number from somebody else’s screenshot. Numbers are machine-specific.
  • Skipping the reboot between steps. Half-removed drivers produce the strangest reports. Reboot when the procedure says reboot.
  • Reinstalling a different build before cleaning. That layers a third package into the store and makes the eventual cleanup harder.
  • Panicking at a long pnputil list. A long list is normal. You are only removing the vJoy entries.

Frequently asked questions

Will this remove my feeder profiles? Feeder profiles live in the feeder programs, such as Joystick Gremlin or UCR, not in the vJoy driver. A complete vJoy uninstall does not delete them, though exporting them first is still wise. Do I need pnputil for a simple build switch? A normal Settings uninstall plus reboot is enough for most switches. Use the full driver store cleanup when problems survive a reinstall or when you want the machine completely clean. What if pnputil says access denied? You are not in an administrator prompt. Reopen the terminal as administrator and repeat the command. Can I reinstall afterwards? Yes. A clean store is the best foundation for a fresh install of a single matching build.

Keep going

Start from the vJoy download page if you need the installer again, and use the vJoy Setup hub as the index for this whole cluster. Two guides that pair naturally with this one are How to Install vJoy: Complete Guide and Upgrading vJoy from 2.1.9.1 to 2.2.2.0. Read them in that order if you are building a setup from scratch: download choice first, installation second, configuration third, and only then time inside a game or simulator. That order prevents the most common wasted hour in this niche, which is debugging a feeder or a game for a driver problem that was visible in Windows all along.

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