A parent driver desiring to access a service of a child driver in a driver stack creates a virtual device object. The virtual device object is inserted into the driver stack below the child driver. When a query to dynamically remove the driver stack arrives at the virtual device object, the virtual device object notifies the parent driver. The parent driver stops accessing the child driver before directly receiving and processing the remove query, allowing the driver stack to be removed after all drivers in the driver stack process the remove query.