How to skip auto-reinstalling of drivers?

[Mivo]

New here, Hi guys.

I recently picked up a pre-built machine that came with W7 (OEM) pre-installed and an Nvidia 8400GS. I replaced the 8400GS with a GTS 250 and figured I'd uninstall the drivers that W7 pulled in through Windows Update, and download the latest Nvidia drivers.

I uninstalled the stock drivers in the Device Manager, checked the "delete drivers" box and restarted the machine. W7 dedected the card and immediately started to auto-install drivers. I could skip the downloading of new drivers, but it still installed older Nvidia drivers (dated April or May 2009). Can this be prevented? If so, how?

Windows Update then offered to download newer drivers (September 2009), which I allowed manually (this part is fine). What I'm looking for is a clean way to uninstall the drivers installed by W7 and then manually install the driver package I downloaded from Nvidia.com.

On a side note (should probably make a separate post for this), is it normal that after the W7 desktop is displayed (including shortcut icons), after two seconds the icons reset (become white default icons) and somewhat slowly reload? After a reboot, that is. I don't remember this happening with the 8400GS before I fiddled with the drivers.

Thanks for any pointers!

 

[TheSchaft]

New here, Hi guys.

I recently picked up a pre-built machine that came with W7 (OEM) pre-installed and an Nvidia 8400GS. I replaced the 8400GS with a GTS 250 and figured I'd uninstall the drivers that W7 pulled in through Windows Update, and download the latest Nvidia drivers.

I uninstalled the stock drivers in the Device Manager, checked the "delete drivers" box and restarted the machine. W7 dedected the card and immediately started to auto-install drivers. I could skip the downloading of new drivers, but it still installed older Nvidia drivers (dated April or May 2009). Can this be prevented? If so, how?

Windows Update then offered to download newer drivers (September 2009), which I allowed manually (this part is fine). What I'm looking for is a clean way to uninstall the drivers installed by W7 and then manually install the driver package I downloaded from Nvidia.com.

On a side note (should probably make a separate post for this), is it normal that after the W7 desktop is displayed (including shortcut icons), after two seconds the icons reset (become white default icons) and somewhat slowly reload? After a reboot, that is. I don't remember this happening with the 8400GS before I fiddled with the drivers.

Thanks for any pointers!

For the drivers, what I have done is just go to the device and click Upgrade Driver" then click "Have Disk" and browse to where the new ones are. I didn't uninstall the old ones first.