Proper Method for Installing nVidia Drivers

What is the proper procedure for installing new nvidia drivers. Just got the 257.21 downloaded - and want to install properly

 

Uninstall the old ones.... run driver sweeper... restart. Install new drivers... restart... done.

Please don't go to the 257 drivers. They're riddled with bugs, from what I've experienced and heard. I'm staying with 197.75 personally.

 

Not in my Vaio FZ with 8400M GT. Whatever you hear might not be true for everyone. 257.21 runs fine as any other older driver.

 

True. My experiences have been on 8200m and G210m.

 

Double post... pls delete!

 

I assume you read this before posting this thread?

 

uninstall old drivers
restart in safe mode
run driver sweeper
restart in normal mode
install new driver

 

RUNNING DRIVER SWEEPER IS AN UNECESSARY STEP! Alot of the folks posting this step just read this here on the forums once and then believing it's "gospel", parrot it to everyone else. First of all, it will delete important registry keys that at first you might not notice until your system starts to act weird. Second it's time consuming. Finally it's doesn't make any sort of difference if you ran it or not. I say just uninstall the old ones, reboot then install the new ones. simple as that. You can use driver sweeper only if there's a conflict, but most of the time it's a non issue.

 

Maybe for you it's unnecessary, but I for one have experienced an incomplete driver uninstall using the "normal" method and have decided to take no chances since then. Only thing to worry about is not to delete everything labelled Nvidia in the sweeper program and everything is set.

 

I very rarely uninstall the old driver , I normaly just install over the top of the old one.

I have use driver sweeper in the past and on reboot no graphic adaptor was found in device manger and when trying to install the new driver i get the message that no supported hardware detected of something like that , and the only way i could get my graphics was to install the oem driver.

Also sometimes when you unistall/driver sweeper you loose the brightness control, so i will stick to just overwriting the old driver, thank-you.

 

Yeah, actually I am not sure why people like to do the drive sweeper step. I've never used and never found any issue with the uninstall/restart/install/restart method. And I used to update graphics drivers a lot.

 

well in the 'olden days' people would run into issues with nvidia drivers not completely uninstalling. could have been n issue with nvidias earlier uninstall routines. it seems quite unecessary nowadays but its always to be better safe than sorry, especially since its quite easy to do.

 

Driver sweeper seems unnecessary really.

Ccleaner gets the same job done just fine.

Uninstal the old drivers, run cclenear and cleanup the registry.
Restart, install new drivers and restart again.

Case closed.

No issues with this method really, and I fail to see the point of wasting time going into Safe Mode when Driver Sweeper or Ccleaner will clean it all up the same way in standard mode.

 

well, the non-driver sweeper method still needs to be restarted into safe mode for installing the new drivers, right?

 

I just install over the top of the old driver and in normal windows not safe mode, once installed check your driver version has changed.

 

when i unistall a driver and reboot in win7 in normal mode, then it automatically installs the uninstalled version.

i think thats why you need to go into safe mode.

 

It hasn't done this in my case.
It will do it upon the very first install of the OS though, but not later.
And even if it does install something, it will be a basic video card adapter in most cases ... which will be your time to install the new driver.

 

Very logical and scientific statements...backed up with quantifiable data and detailed rationale..... NOTTTTT!!!!

If you do not use Driver Sweeper or similar, is your machine going to self-destruct when installing a new driver? No, it's not.

But it may have instances where conflicts arise that prevent control panel, Physx or the complete driver set from installing, where any of these could have installed if nVidia entries were wiped clean. It's happened to me enough times (and others, but would take a bit to find posts) to take the extra 3 minutes to run DS. People have actually bypassed decent drivers because they had a failed install that may have/ could have been averted by taking this step.

For those less techinically inclined, troubleshooting why something didn't install can be a pain in the butt averted by running DS.

Also, as someone mentioned, you can just install over current driver or update to new driver using have disc method. If it has been a while since you last updated, this may cause problems as well. And if you like to roll-back after this type of install because you liked the old driver performance better, a new series (i.e. 257 back to 19x for example) won't allow it more often than not.

Seriously, if your method works for you, it will probably work for others...but others may have issues with it. Personally, I like to take the extra step, based on personal experience and the experiences of those in the community. Regardless, it ain't cool to come into a thread and babble BS about a suggestion made by someone else without backing it up...whether you are right or not.

 

I used to do that too.. installing above the old one but nowadays system tools doesn't work without doing the drive sweeper way..

 

You need to tick the "delete driver software" box when you're uninstalling the driver via device manager, otherwise when Windows starts up it looks for the 'best' driver.. which is the one you just uninstalled.

 

where exactly will i find this? Can you please describe a bit in detail.

Thanks!

 

Check here.. it's ATI but works just the same for NVIDIA. Just steps 1 and 2, ignore the rest.

strags.com basic driver install guide

 

It's alot more risk involved using the driver sweeper method. Again your messing with the registry and deleting crucial registry entries. I've lost many functions and didn't know until I a few months later when I couldn't even go back to a restore point. One such function loss is the ability to game with adequate frames per second while gaming just running on battery power.

I'll bet that many laptop owners that need to be plugged in to have sufficient framerates in games, is because they used the driver sweeper method and deleted important registry keys that would enable their laptop to game on just battery power.

Although I'm thinking Nvidia has now fixed this problem with the more modern mobile driver releases, they most likely also took into account the updating process and any conflicts with older drivers making it needless to use driver sweeper, but hey whatever floats your boat.

 

How were you able to determine this was caused by driver sweeper?

 

When going from 197.16 to 257.15, I just uninstalled the driver from the Programs & Features control panel, and installed the new driver after a reboot. No problems here.

I honestly don't think Nvidia's uninstaller is still bad enough to require a Driver Sweeper run.

 

guys, i am having a weird problem.

Whenever i uninstall my 197.45 WHQL, and reboot in safe mode, then win7 automatically installs the old OEM version drivers (188.xx).

I have tried running driver sweeper just after uninstall and also in safe mode.

Nothing works. the moment i restart, in whichever mode, win7 installs the driver.

HELP please!

 

Have you told Windows Update not to download drivers? See attached pic

 

Try this method - just remember to reenable driver installation after you've booted and you're ready to install the driver you want.

 

gpedit.msc doesnt come up when i search for it. I have win7 Home basic 64 bit.

Also, i tried the device installation settings method. didnt work either!

HELP!

 

Windows installs the GPU driver by itself because a previous driver uninstall didn't delete the driver from the Windows driver repository located here C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository.
Uninstall the driver from the device manager, with "delete driver software option checked", and restart.