Win7 Driver Clarification

S

Seep

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Jun 6, 2009
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How do I reinstall graphics drivers, step by step? (for windows 7)

If I uninstall them and reboot they automatically reinstall, do I need to uninstall then install the new ones without restarting? When would I need to use driver sweeper?
 
Just use driver sweeper then reboot and install the drivers you want.
 
All you should have to do is uninstall and then reinstall. I have nVidia and AMD GPU's and this method has worked on both. The automatic drivers are just the ones in the box and shouldn't affect the vendor drivers.
 
When you uninstall and reboot, it's still going to look for the best driver available on the system and use that. You're not going to get it to completely go down to a simple VGA driver unless the driver itself is not available on the system. The only way to do that is to use the device manager, check the properties for the hardware, hit uninstall, then check the box to delete the driver. At that point your likely deleting the driver that comes with windows since you've already uninstalled the new one from control panel. There's no need to do that though.

You download the newest driver, run it, and it uninstalled the old driver, installs the new one, and reboots. There's no reason to make it more complicated than that.
 
I don't need to run driver sweeper at all or reboot during the process? Just install new driver and go about my day? Things have sure changed from XP.
 
Seep said:
I don't need to run driver sweeper at all or reboot during the process? Just install new driver and go about my day? Things have sure changed from XP.
Click to expand...
XP didn't come with a lot of drivers, so often time when you removed a drive from add/remove, you were left with a default VGA driver or other uninstalled hardware. At that point the system 'looks' clean but really it just doesn't have the appropriate software. Vista and 7 will generally always have some type of default driver to use to at least gain some functionality of the hardware.
 
Just uninstall the old driver and install the new driver. That's all there should be to it.
 
With Vista and Win7 you don't really need to uninstall the old anymore. You just install the new drivers and go. The newer driver packages from Ati and Nv do a fine job of uninstalling the old and installing the new.

Yes, it is prolly safer to totally scrub the old drivers from your system, especially if you are switching between Ati and Nv gpu's. And sometimes weird things do happen, but so far I have not had a problem on any of the systems I deal with under Vista or 7.
 
In my experience, if you try to trick Windows 7 and avoid installing the default VGA driver, when you go to install your updated drivers (for the NVIDIA drivers atleast) it will not recognize what card you have anyway.
 
No need to uninstall old drivers, just install the new ones.
 
Not really. Unless you are switching between Nv and Ati, and even then it is not strictly necessary under Vista and 7.
 
I've always just installed new drivers, never uninstalled, never ran driver cleaners, nothing. Have never really had a problem. Nice thing about 7 is, when I installed it, I downloaded and ran nvidia's drivers, and without so much as one reboot the new drivers were running and functional. I got scared and rebooted anyways, but learned that's how it's supposed to be and have since been just doing an install and go.
 
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