Link to windows does not allow removal of old devices

On Samsung my Samsung Phone, the Link to windows app display my laptop 3 times. One is active, the other two are inactive. I assume there are duplicates because of resetting that laptop to factory defaults a couple of times since I got it 5 years ago. The problem is I cannot remove the old ones. They show as disconnected. There is no option to remove them. I use the copy/paste function across devices (very useful), but every time I copy/paste and get irritating messages on the phone saying 'cannot copy to xxxxxx device' where that devices is the laptop the phone is connected to. It's saying it cannot copy to the device I'm actually connected to, but it's referrring to old definition of that device. I've tried many ways to remove these old versions of the devices. For the last attempt, I removed the current connection from the phone, completely removed it from the laptop, then on the phone I cleared the data and cache for the link to windows app, then successfully re-paired the device. The old versions if device came back too! I believe the information is store in my Microsoft Account, but it's not externalised. Additionally, in my list of devices where my Microsoft Account is in use, it doesn't show the either the laptop or the phone, just a desktop PC and an Xbox. There clearly needs to be some way to permanently remove the connected history, particularly when the laptop has been used before but was reset. I've seen this issue reported many times, but there seems to be no way to fix this problem.