Need to clean drivers?

mattchapman

mattchapman

Gawd
Joined
Dec 30, 2005
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I'm moving from an 8800GT to a GTX 560 Ti.

Can I just go ahead and install the new drivers on top of the old ones? Or is it advisable to "clean" the old drivers off first?

Sorry if this is a lame question...it's been a while since I upgraded!
 
If your old drivers were 260 or higher, there is no need to clean the drivers. I would suggest using the "clean install" option when you install the new ones though. If they were pre 260 I would clean them out before the new install.
 
Yeah my old drivers are 195 :)
So better clean them out.

Can you recommend a good program to do that or do I just do it in the control panel?
 
mattchapman said:
Yeah my old drivers are 195 :)
So better clean them out.

Can you recommend a good program to do that or do I just do it in the control panel?
Click to expand...

http://www.nvidia.com/object/drivers_faq.html

There shouldn't be any need to uninstall/clean out drivers first

Q: Do I need to uninstall my older driver first?
A: No. It used to be the case that an uninstall was first required. Today the recommended method is to overinstall the newer driver on top of your older driver. This will allow you to maintain any current NVIDIA Control Panel settings or profiles.
 
While it's not completely necessary, I would recommend you do it anyway, it doesn't take that long.
 
Violator, that nVidia driver FAQ answer applies to 260 and newer drivers. At least that is what they said last time I read through their install procedure recommendations. I'm not sure if that means you can install 260 and newer over anything, or that they suggest installing over old drivers only if the old ones are 260 or newer.

I cleaned my 197s out to be safe when I installed 260.99. 263.09 and 266.58 were installed on top of old drivers using the "clean install" option with no problems.
 
DDuckMan said:
Violator, that nVidia driver FAQ answer applies to 260 and newer drivers. At least that is what they said last time I read through their install procedure recommendations. I'm not sure if that means you can install 260 and newer over anything, or that they suggest installing over old drivers only if the old ones are 260 or newer.

I cleaned my 197s out to be safe when I installed 260.99. 263.09 and 266.58 were installed on top of old drivers using the "clean install" option with no problems.
Click to expand...

That's as may be, what I'm trying to understand is the general paranoia that seems prevalent that says you must clean out drivers when swapping cards, particularly from the same vendor. What is going to be installed in the new set that won't overwrite an old version of the same file for example?. Even switching between AMD and nVidia for example, why would Windows try to access an AMD file if you have an nVidia card installed? It wouldn't happen.

In this case, I'd suspect that installing the new drivers over the old would be just fine, and at the very least using the default uninstaller should be sufficient if required.
 
Right. Running driver sweeper or similar with every driver or card change isn't necessary. Rarely there may be a problem those programs could fix if switching GPU companies, but even then using the uninstaller should be sufficient.

There are a few (mainly in other forums) who feel otherwise.
 
DDuckMan said:
Right. Running driver sweeper or similar with every driver or card change isn't necessary. Rarely there may be a problem those programs could fix if switching GPU companies, but even then using the uninstaller should be sufficient.

There are a few (mainly in other forums) who feel otherwise.
Click to expand...

Agreed :)
 
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