Probably, it is not necessary to say that in everyday work, many users very often have to use programs or built-in tools of Windows systems that allow them to work with virtual disk drives and drives of any other type. Particularly popular are applications like Alcohol 120% and DAEMON Tools. But in the process of their installation, an incomprehensible additional SPTD driver is usually integrated into the system. What is it, further and try to find out. We will pay special attention to some issues related to the removal of this component from the operating system, since its use is very often completely inappropriate, and getting rid of it is often quite difficult.
SPTD: what is it?
For starters, let's define what kind of component it is. It is a universal storage controller driver that allows you to work with any type of internal and external drives,acting as a kind of emulator. Most often, it is necessary so that, for example, in the above programs, you can quickly mount a virtual drive or disk, which you can later work with just as easily as in the case of conventional "iron" drives. When installing programs intended for such purposes (not counting working with images), the SPTD driver is, as it were, “embedded” in their own installer and is installed directly during the installation of the main program (usually, the sptd.sys driver file is integrated into the system, and as a location uses the Drivers directory nested in the System32 system directory).
Do I need to use the driver on Windows systems?
What is SPTD is still a little clear. Let's see how much the user really needs it, because it can often cause non-standard errors, load computer resources in terms of unreasonably high use of RAM or too frequent access to the same hard disk. Yes, indeed, for the programs themselves, which provide for the use of emulators, it is needed.
That is, without this intermediary driver, they will not be able to create virtual analogues of storage media due to compatibility problems. However, their use in the latest modifications of Windows, starting from the seventh version, is not practical at all, since all of them automatically mount virtual optical drives from the same image files when double-clicking on them. Another thing is if you need additional features of the above applications. But that's not the point. For the most part, many users are interested in questions about the removal of this component, because when uninstalling the main applications, the driver remains in the system and tries to work further, sometimes even blocking its own OS tools.
How to get rid of the driver: the simplest solution
In terms of theoretical information, this is all that concerns the SPTD component. What it is, I think, has already become clear. Now is the time to consider solutions for removing this component if for some reason it is no longer needed in the system or causes errors and resource loads. The easiest way, according to most experts, is to uninstall the main program using uninstaller applications like iObit Uninstaller, which automatically clean up the “tails”, deleting files from the hard drive and all system registry keys.
How do I remove SPTD manually?
But you can imagine a situation where you didn't have the right removal tool at hand. In this situation, you will have to get rid of the driver manually. First you need to download the original driver installer from the official website of the developer, taking into account the bit depth of your own operating system, then run it as an administrator, but instead of installing, select the uninstall item.
But what is it? SPTD removes only the main components. But what to do with the leftovers or if you don’t have a “native” uninstaller either?
In this situation, it is highly recommended to boot into safe mode first, open the Device Manager, go to the SCSI controllers section, find the SPTD driver there and disable it using the RMB menu.
Now you need to launch the registry editor (regedit), through the HKLM branch and the SOFTWARE and CurrentControlSet sections, get to the Services directory, open the sptd subsection in it, double-click on the Start key on the right in the window and change its value to 4, after which close the editor and perform secure boot again. Now in the registry you need to find all the sections in the designation of which there is SPTD, using the search (Ctrl + F) in the HKLM branch, and then delete everything found.
If a refusal is issued during deletion due to lack of rights, use the permissions setting via RMB and set full access. When finished, go to the "Explorer" to the above-mentioned Drivers directory of course, delete the sptd.sys file from there and reboot the system in normal mode.
Note: if you can't get rid of the driver file even after deleting its keys in the registry (which is very doubtful), unlock it with the Unlocker utility.
