NVIDIA Drivers - Avoid Problems

ICIT2LOL said:

Hmm regarding NVidia drivers I have just had a an interesting experience with my new laptop in that Asus support advised me to download drivers for the GTX 860M and after five different drivers all said there was no such device on board.

Now I happened to be able to get onto the Asus support site in Sydney and within an hour my GPU is functional and all because the drivers for the GPU from NVidia and the global Asus support site were not what was needed and the driver had to come through an Asus support site did not know about and not the one that one can Google!!

It turns out that this machine was made in the US and probably a refurbished one and the fellow I spoke to was so knowledgeable it reaffirmed my faith in Asus. Mind you it took three months of trying before the fix could be applied!!

So it seems that NVidia drivers are not the same for any old machine(I mean at least Asus ones)

Laptop drivers are usually modified drivers the OEM's alter to their specs, sometimes the Nvidia or AMD drivers will work but with laptops it is always best to get them from the OEM when available.

That's a good thing to remember in the BSOD threads John.

armyslowrdr said:

After step 8....after it installs the graphics adaptor it requests a reboot. Only problem is when computer reboots IT INSTALLS the Nvidia driver I just uninstalled.

Should I skip this reboot and try step 9 immediately ?

If Nvidia installer package worked correctly in 1st place........lot of people having problem using it with all panels black right after using it and right after windows splash screen appears...only way out seems to be letting windows due a repair (which is a roll back in time). Only reason I am trying methodology in this thread which isnt working out for me either. All I want is the updated driver so when pop for the Dell 4K panel......

Same problem here. I'm trying to confirm or eliminate driver issues as a cause for BSODs (it's either that or the graphics card itself, happens when I play games) but Step 8, rebooting the computer, effectively undoes Step 7, uninstallation of the drivers, hence the driver installer (Step 9) is just going to refuse to do anything on the grounds a newer version is already installed.

essenbe said:

Also, some times Windows Update will have an Nvidia Driver, I believe it will uninstall the C:/Nvidia folder and the current driver will probably be in Windows Updates or wherever Windows installs drivers. I have my Windows update set like the tutorial suggests all the time and will usually not install hardware updates but go find one that is more current. Don't tell Greg.

I don't think it is a good practice to ever advise consumers to turn off Windows Update as they likely will never return to see what all they're missing and 7 is so heavily patched now that you can almost be sure there are patches there that some hardware, software or the OS depend upon. Often these are strangely queued under Optional.

My point of view here is mostly from Clean Reinstall Factory OEM where I would still always go with WIndows Update drivers since I can't remember a single one of it's 1.3+ million users who reported bogus WUD drivers, and that's acknowledging their screw-up rate of one in a million.

With self-builds there's better reason to immediately plug in the chipset and GPU drivers, possibly after seeing what WUD offers since you know in most cases that's the OS speaking.

In either case I always turn off all GPU software in msconfig>Statup and >Services (after Hiding all MS Services) and in Services.msc since it's bloatware can present problems and is not needed.

Just another point of view. You guys work in BSOD which has my greatest respect, and will know how much GPU software is too much. Last I recall on the subject was something Archie said about never using it.

Which one is installed in Device Manager? How's performance?

Recent Nvidia updates are bypassing MS config and will need disabling in services.MSC.

It's usually coded in the Display driver version.

It looks like you've gotten a newer one than either of those, Probably from Windows Update.

In any case you can delete those two files from C as they are merely staging files for the driver install.