This is a brilliant set of steps - thank you @ellisbjohns
I had a couple of items were removing the failed node itself failed. However you can replace failed nodes with a random other device, and this worked fine - I could then delete the random device as normal.
So I now have no more weird ghost nodes, and a faster startup.
Hi @chris, could you make some progress on removing dead berrery devices. Again I have a device not functioning properly and would to permanently remove with from the controller. I used the advanced tools, but after removing it and deleting the thing it re-appears on a new scan. Now I have 4 of them on the controller from previous tests…and want to get rid of them
I don’t have Windows, so the suggested tools are not suitable.
I’ve run the Aeotec zwave tools successfully on a vmware virtual windows box on my mac, if that’s any help. That removes dead notes easily.
I have VM ware, but no suitable Windows Image, so…
But in any case it shows that it is possible, so @chris might find a trick to fix that issue. 
yes - backing up and killing dead nodes directly from openhab would be fantastic…
You may accelerate it:
Dear Ellis!
Thanks for the “manual” - do you know what step 1 does/means technically seen?
Regards,
Herbert
@hl_at.
Truthfully, I’m not exactly sure as I wrote these instructions about a year ago. One thing I have noticed is that openhab’s zwave binding doesn’t always reflect the true state of the node when compared with the z-stick controller’s node state (i.e. eprom). This often leads to inconsistencies that have to be addressed using a third party tool which directly changes the z-sticks internal node status (e.g. Zensys). The combo of Zensys and Chris Jackson’s binding have allowed me to accomplish a ton of zwave reconfigurations over the past year, but either tool alone has not been sufficient. Step #1 likely allows you to delete a node which the z-wave binding believes to be dead/failed but the node still has an active entry in the zstick’s eprom (i.e. it was never truly deleted by the bindings api calls to the zstick). Hope this helps.
I think this is very unlikely. The binding reads the list of nodes directly from the controller (ie eprom) so it will be consistent.
I think what you are talking about is removal of devices that appear in the OH list, but can’t be removed - I think this is a bit different…
Yeah…What Chris said 
hey @ellisbjohns
I havent tried the zensys tool yet (link not working atm).
Do you know if this tool has a option to change the state from FAILED to OK ?
I have some nodes that acutally work but the controller lists them as failed and therfore openhab reads them as offline
cheers
No - this isn’t possible. Only the controller can do this.
I think I finally found a way to also delete nodes that are not marked as dead by the controller. I also used the Zensys tool, but instead of using the “Remove Failed” function I used the “Replace Failed” function. (to the left of the remove function)
Simply click on the node you like to remove, start the function and put any Z-Wave device in inclusion mode. (I used a switch I don’t use at the moment) After a few seconds the progressbar disappears and the node is put to the end of the list. Now the node is replaced with my switch and I can simply put the controller and the switch into remove mode and the node is gone!
I tried this with 3 nodes that I had for a long time on my controller and it worked on all of them.
@chris Maybe you could implement this replace function into your addon so we don’t always have to unplug the Z-Stick?
Me too. Meanwhile I have eleven of them.
My z-Wave-Controller is a raZberry-Board on Raspberry Pi3. So no usb-stick that I can put somewhere.
Is there such a tool available that can be installed on a RPi3?
To me it feels like those failed or dead devices slow down my system because the controller constantly tries to connect to them. That’s the reason I would like to get rid of them.
@chris Is that right? If not, I also would ignore them.
By the way: I use PaperUI to include and rename z-wave-devices. And HABmin to configure the z-wave-devices.
@chris Would you recommend, NOT to use PaperUI? Should I do everything with HABmin instead? Could this in general prevent some problems?
Thanks a lot!
Did you already try the “usual” way?
Go to HABmin, select your node, Tools … Show advanced settings. Then click “Set device as failed”, wait a minute, then “Remove device from controller”.
After that it may still be there but after an openHAB restart it should be gone.
Yes. Sorry that I didn’t describe more detailed what I’ve tried so far.
This are some of the nodes I would like to get rid of.
All this devices have worked fine but at some point didn’t anymore. After many tries, I got them reincluded and they are working fine now with a new node-number. But the old node numbers are still listed, like you can see below:
When I’m trying what you suggest, I get those errors.
I did spend a lot of time searching the forum, reading many posts and trying to solve this. And at some point I gave up. Maybe because of my missing skills.
So, at the moment I don’t want to burden you with that. I would like to know if this nodes don’t effect my z-wave-net. Then I would just ignore them. But I don’t believe so. .
Do those get rediscovered when you just delete the “things”?
I had the same experiences. Couldn´t remove a node from Habmin, got the same communication error.
I don’t speak German (sorry) so can you tell me what this means, or provide a debug log please?
