devices and Printers window loads real slow in windows 8.1

I have found that the build up of Generic volume shadow copies does appear to have at least one undesired effect, i.e. Devices and Printers takes for ever to load up.

The build up on my computer had reached several thousand Genetic volume shadow copies. Trawling the forums often brings up the advice to delete them. However, to delete them one by one is not a practical option. Here is another very quick way of deleting them.

Control panel - Device Manager - View - Show hidden devices.

Click on Devices by connection.

Expand Volume Manager. This will display a list of Generic volumes.

Some of the Generic volumes can be expanded.

Examine these Generic volumes, and if there are any  greyed out Generic volume shadow copies (there could be thousands of them), uninstall the parent Genetic volume. All the child Generic volume shadow copies will disappear with the parent.

It may be good idea to restart the computer on completion.

I've used the above method on my computer and so far it does not appear to have caused any problems. Devices and Printers now loads instantaneously anyway.

The Generic volume shadow copies will build up again over time. So I have added this to my regular backup routine to check on the build up. It only takes a couple of minutes.

This may not work for everyone and I hasten to add that I am not a professional!

As always, don't forget to do a backup first (don't bother with Microsoft's backup methods. They don't always work - many posts on this too! I use Macrium Reflect - works well).

Please stop wasting everybody's time and patience with stock Microsoft cut and paste answers. I'm sure most people have tried all these useless suggestions to no avail otherwise we would not be posting here.

If you haven't noticed, this is a widespread problem experienced by users. Try Googling it.

If any community members have any useful ideas I'm sure we would all be interested.

Very interesting! I can confirm the use of RealTek integrated sound card with the latest drivers installed.

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 can't agree more.

What the MS response tells me is that they are aware of the problem, they may or may not be currently fixing it because they don't know what the issue really is and there is NO way they are going to tell their "customers" that it's broke and they don't have a fix for it.

classic software customer service. 

IF I COULD ABANDON WINDOWS IN THE WORK ENVIRONMENT I WOULD HAVE DONE IT YESTERDAY.