Driver Uninstall Problem

langford

I have an nVidia 7800GT card in my system, and last updated the driver in early 2006, with the help of Driver Cleaner Pro. I now have Driver Cleaner.NET, and was about to do another, long-overdue driver update, when I discovered that nVidia is nowhere listed in my Control Panel's Add/Remove section, and I thus can't take the presumably vital step of uninstalling the current driver in the normal manner. The last time I updated the driver, nVidia was listed; this time it's not. Is there any way I can fix this, and proceed with the update?

Spike

hi what you can do is go to start and then run. Type
C:\windows\system32\nvuDisp.exe Uninstall C:\windows\system32\NvDisp.nvu

Now the driver uninstall should start.

langford

Thank you, Spike! I'll give that a shot after a good night's sleep.

langford

Spike - I did as you suggested, but it didn't work. I kept getting the message "nvuDisp.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close."

Anything further I can do?

Spike

What you can do is reboot into safemode. Then navigate to the windows control panel -> system -> hardware -> device manager -> display adapters -> highlight the nVidia (there is 1 maybe 2) and right click with the mouse on it and the choose uninstall, do this for both if there are 2 but don't reboot. This will uninstall the display driver.

Now run Driver Cleaner and select nVidia. After cleaning reboot and in the normal windows install the new driver.

langford

That did the trick. Thanks again.

But in light of that, a new question arises: Why bother at all with the Control Panel removal step, if it all can be done via the Device Manager?

Spike

Now the control panel is easier and by some drivers you need to do the control panel uninstall. The device manager method is only when the other doesn't work.

Glad the method worked.