devices and Printers window loads real slow in windows 8.1

Ghost Generic volume shadow copies back with a vengeance! I thought I had cracked it, however....!

"Devices and Printers" took forever to load which is a symptom of this problem.

So what to do next? In the past 'System Restore' has often been less than reliable so I now use EaseUS Todo which has got me out of trouble on a number of occasions. Therefore I reasoned, "Why do I need VSS (Volume Shadow Copy) at all?". 

So, I have removed all the Ghost Generic volume shadow copies and disabled VSS (Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Services - Volume Shadow Copy - double click - change Startup type to 'Disabled'). Now there are no Ghost Generic volume shadow copies and they don't look as though they are coming back.

"Devices and Printers" now loads instantly.

Of course it means that Control Panel - File History - System Image Backup just produces an error message (File History still works OK though). But as EaseUS Todo does what I want, this is not a problem.

I noticed that in the Windows 10 Preview Build 10130, Control Panel has brought back 'Windows 7 Backup and Restore'. I suspect that when Microsoft removed this from Windows 8/8.1, they only did half a job and left all the old Generic Volume Shadow Copies to build up? Just a thought. Perhaps the problem with Ghost Generic volume shadow copies will go away with Windows 10? 

Why don't Microsoft sort it out for Windows 8/8.1? It may be an irritation for me but a Google search shows that it is a problem with clogging up and slowing down servers which must be costing for business?

I hasten to add that I am not a Microsoft expert, just a hobbyist. So if anyone has any comments on the above, I would be very interested.

My Windows 8.1 install had this problem and devnodeclean worked for me.  I had thousands of entries in the registry corresponding to ghost volume entries to the point that even device manager refused to come up.

Shame on Microsoft for not addressing this issue.  :-/

I do not have those folders either, however, I did a search and found:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Device Stage

Note that C:\ProgramData is a hidden folder.

I did not do anything to this folder though.

Instead, I followed a previous posters' advice about revealing hidden devices in the device manager.

While I did not have the sheer quantity of "phantom" devices (with code 45) that the poster had, I did have quite a few, something like a couple dozen of them.  There were a couple I was loath to uninstall, but I uninstalled most of the ones I was confident were ok to delete, like non-existant sound input/outputs.

This solved the problem for me on another computer I was having the issue on.

Yay Dillon_642.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I deleted this "Phantom" devices and that took care of the problem. Thanks a lot.

Uninstalling the Realtek drivers worked for me!

I can't believe this is still an issue 2 years later! Common Realtek!

I just put together a new build with an Asus Z170-A mobo and Win8.1. Had slow (30+ seconds) opening times for the Printers & Devices window.

Uninstalled the Realtek audio driver, rebooted, let Win 8.1 install the generic drivers and now the printers and devices window opens instantly, and I don't have all the Realtek bloatware running in the background.

My own fault really. My past inclination is to NEVER install factory audio drivers. They add too much fluff and crapware features. I'll stick to that course from now on.

This may not be the cause for everyone, but if you have a Realtek card with factory drivers, I'd try it. Only takes a minute and you can always re-install the drivers if you want them back and it doesn't fix the problem. But frankly, you're better off with the generic drivers. Since Win7, Windows itself handles sound management much better than the bloated audio driver software.

I had the same Problem.

After removing the Nvidia HD Audio Driver the problem went away, and page printers and devices become open instantly. Try to remove them if you use this driver from Nvidia, and perhaps this will help you !!

PS. But I use windose 10, but I do not think that this is very different system