How to remove legacy extensions for old printers ?

If these items are in the System folder, then they're trapped. The only way to get rid of them would be to entirely erase the drive and rebuild it from scratch.

Kurt Lang wrote:

If these items are in the System folder, then they're trapped. The only way to get rid of them would be to entirely erase the drive and rebuild it from scratch.

So I guess the user installed those extensions in macOS 10.15 Catalina or earlier and then they got trapped when macOS 11 Big Sur introduced Signed System Volume (SSV, sometimes referred to as Sealed System Volume), right? If yes, I wonder if it was intentional to seal also those 3rd party software items? Or maybe there were so many old obscure edge cases for 3rd party stuff that Apple used just brute force with those when updating old installs to Big Sur.

To determine whether it is the case that these are in System and thus trapped, as Kurt and Matti suggested: Please run Etrecheck and post its full report here. Use the "additional text" button and paste the report into the text box.

Boy, you do have a lot of very old stuff.

The good news is that most of it, at least, is easy to uninstall.

For example, all of these printer drivers are in /Library/Extensions

like these and more:

[Not Loaded] hp_qc_io_enabler.kext - com.hp.hpio.hp_psa530_630_io_enabler (1.0.1)

[Not Loaded] hp_fax_io.kext - com.hp.kext.hp-fax-io (5.25.1 - SDK 10.11)

[Not Loaded] hp_io_enabler_compound.kext - com.hp.kext.io.enabler.compound (3.2.0)

[Not Loaded] hp_designjet_series.kext - com.hp.print.hpio.Designjet.kext (2.1)

[Not Loaded] hp_Deskjet_io_enabler.kext - com.hp.print.hpio.Deskjet.kext (3.0)

[Not Loaded] hp_Inkjet_io_enabler.kext - com.hp.print.hpio.Inkjet.kext (3.0.3)

[Not Loaded] hp_Inkjet1_io_enabler.kext - com.hp.print.hpio.Inkjet1.kext (2.1.2)

[Not Loaded] hp_Inkjet3_io_enabler.kext - com.hp.print.hpio.Inkjet3.kext (2.0.1)

[Not Loaded] hp_Inkjet4_io_enabler.kext - com.hp.print.hpio.Inkjet4.kext (4.5.0 - SDK 10.11)

[Not Loaded] hp_Inkjet5_io_enabler.kext - com.hp.print.hpio.Inkjet5.kext (2.1)

[Not Loaded] hp_Laserjet_io_enabler.kext - com.hp.print.hpio.Laserjet.kext (1.0)

You can just drag them to the trash (enter your password if required), then restart.

For a comprehensive clean up of your system, you could do this:

1) Full Time Machine backup or two

2) System Settings->General->Transfer or Reset, then Erase All Content and Settings

3) Migrate ONLY the user accounts from the backup

4) Install only the applications you do need and use

JohnnyRichGuitar wrote:

Yes, a lot of stuff on this machine goes back quite a ways ... some of it long before Catalina if memory serves. Interesting (for want of a better word) that Apple 'trapped' these extensions.

In your case, they are not trapped.

Those that live in /Library/Extensions (which seem to be all or most of them) can be easily deleted.

The problem is that in the old days some programs installed things inside /System, which should be reserved for Apple. So /Library/Extensions would be ok, but /System/Library/Extensions should be off-limits, yet some stuff was installed there anyway. Once Apple made this area sealed-off, some stuff may have remained.

In that case, the only decent solution is to do a clean install.

Sounds good.

I only mentioned the System folder because we had no information (until the EtreCheck report) where these kernel extensions might be.

I've seen about a dozen of these over the years on this forum. What happens is the user has upgraded the OS over multiple previous versions. Since older OS versions allowed extensions to be installed to the System folder, the OS eventually gets upgraded to a version that doesn't allow anything by third party apps there. But since those extensions were already there, then they can't be removed.

Catalina was kind of a hybrid between Mojave and Big Sur. It was the first macOS version to have the locked down System folder. But, it wasn't truly locked down as it would be in Big Sur or later. You could boot to any other volume with Catalina on it and do whatever you wanted to the non-startup drive. Including anything in the System folder.

No idea why Apple ever allowed such a thing, but one thing developers were allowed to do in Catalina was use a special function to install a kernel extension to the System folder. But, once there, even their own uninstaller couldn't remove it. I found that out in a conversation with a developer after I was testing VirtualBox at the time. It did exactly that. It would put an extension in the System folder, but then couldn't remove it. Only knowing you could modify a Catalina volume while not being startup volume allowed me to manually remove the extension.

Once a person installed Big Sur or later, then old extensions like that could not be removed in any way other than erasing the drive.