Safe to remove these .kext files?

[BoomerTheBlunt]

Hi All, just trying to clean up my MacPro 5,1 with Mojave installed. I noticed that there are a bunch of extensions that are blocked from loading. I'm wondering if I need them anymore, and if not, is simply removing them from the extensions folder going to get rid of them or is there something else I need to do?

I used to have a HighPoint card in here and a Sonnet card and a Promise card at one point. They are long gone. The only cards I currently have installed besides thew GPU are a generic USB 3.1 card that runs off the drivers that are part of the OS and an OWC Accelsior 1M2 PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD Card.

Here is a list of what I'm looking at:

In Library/Extensions

hp_io_enabler_compound.kext
CalDigitHDProDrv.kext
tap.kext
tun.kext
PromiseSTEX.kext
ArcMSR.kext
HighPointRR.kext
SoftRAID.kext
HighPointIOP.kext
ATTOExpressSASHBA2.kext
ATTOExpressSASRAID2.kext
ATTOCelerityFC8.kext



In System/Library/Extensions

DVKeyboardDriver.kext
SiliconImage3132.kext
EPSONUSBPrintClass.kext
rr272x_1x.kext
SXHCD.kext


Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

[Fishrrman]

I would be careful about removing kexts, unless I knew where each one "came from" and what it was for.

For example, the EPSON kext is probably printer (or scanner) related.
You can probably remove that without problems.

But I'd be less sure about something named "tun.kext".
Where did that come from, and what's it for...?

 

[Honza1]

tun and tap are likely related to vpn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TUN/TAP). Which vpn I do not know.
I usually look at the dates on these files and see, if they are really old, I remove them.
You can simply google the kext name (with .kext included) and often you get helpful information with name of the hardware/software and can make a decision.
In System Information you can find list of loaded kexts with some useful information, including developer. That is not always that helpful, but sometimes good enough. If they are not loaded, your call.. Leave in case they would be needed or delete...
You can probably remove most of these, at worst something stops working. If you have installers, it should not matter, you can reinstall the applications.
You will also need to force clear staging in cache, or simple removing these kexts will not do anything. Issue this in command line : sudo kextcache --clear-staging
and provide admin password, when asked.

 

[BrianBaughn]

If you really want a clean macOS you could think about a fresh system and apps install and NOT using Migration Assistant.