Deleted HIDGUARDIAN.sys from System 32

[Haydnp]

Hi guys,

ive made the mistake of messing around with system 32. My friends and I was trying to play together on a game using a PlayStation controller. Basically we found out that HIDGUARDIAN was stopping us by installing a driver that didn’t allow us to connect to steam. We found out that my friends PC didn’t have hidguardian so I deleted it. Restarted my pc and now non of my peripherals are working, keyboard mouse or speakers. They work on start up so I can get onto my BIOS settings and startup stuff but as for logging into my pc I cannot as my leds on my keyboard and mouse turn off as soon as the log in screen comes up. Any help on how to fix this would be greatly appreciated!!

 

[SpyderTracks]

Quickest resolution will be to either run a windows repair from installation media, or just bite the bullet and reinstall windows.

Basically that sys file controls any peripheral device, without it you basically can't plug anything into windows.

 

[Scott]

Try booting into safe mode and see if it allows basic driver use from there. If not, the repair option above may help. If that doesn't work, you're going to either have to restore it from command line or re-install windows altogether.

 

[ubuysa]

From my research (because until now I'd never heard of it) hidguardian.sys is not part of Windows. It will have been installed with some third party software, like a game.

It's a driver filter rather than a driver itself, and is used for input devices (HID a Human Input Device). The 'guardian's part of the name is be cause the filter acts rather like a firewall, filtering between input devices and applications. It seems its primary purpose it to filter out duplicate inputs.

You don't need hidguardian.sys, Windows will function perfectly without it (that's why your friend doesn't have it) but you can't just delete it. You'd need to uninstall hidguardian just as you'd uninstall any other driver. Removing hidguardian.sys will of course expose you to the potential problems (with some games) that it solves.

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[Scott]

In that case ^ it should work fine from Safe-mode where you should be allowed to either uninstall the conflicting driver software, or restore it.

 

[ubuysa]

In that case ^ it should work fine from Safe-mode where you should be allowed to either uninstall the conflicting driver software, or restore it.

Indeed. Reinstalling whatever software (game?) included it should reinstall hidguardian.sys.

The lessons here are that a) you can't just compare two different systems and b) you.myst never delete any system files without fully understanding what you're doing.

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