I recently upgraded the driver for my 7600gt following a new driver release in mid july.

Unfortunately the new driver appears to be awkward in the extreme. If you try to monitor temperatures or do any overclocking it tells me that this is now an advanced feature and I have to download a programme called "ntune" to access it. This i did, despite the fact that the Ntune application doesn't state that it supports the 7600gt.
And surprise surprise it doesn't work very well. You can't monitor temperatures through it. If you open the settings window there is no way of closing it down again, and it actually states that it works best on resolutions of 1052x768. Who uses these resolutions these days?
So, in a fit of frustration and being unable to find the old driver to reinstall, I went for a system restore to before upgrading the driver and I now have my old nforce settings window back. But my GPU is playing up now. I am being chucked to desktop during games, colours are inconsistent and it wont allow an overclock anymore.

So the question is, would you guys persevere with the new driver, or try to find an archived older one. And what (free) programmes do people use to completely remove old drivers?

Thanks guys.

Use driver cleaner pro for cleaning your drivers. Youll need to do that, sounds like you mulched em. Get nVidia monitor, itll monitor the temps of your gpu

I'll d/l driver cleaner pro and try that. I can't find nvidia monitor, it seems to be merged with this ntune that doesn't seem to run well.
Maybe with a clean install it will work better, I'll try it

Nvidia control panel for the 7 series has a temp monitor built in although I prefer to use Rivatuner. http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=163

HTH.

who makes that card?

you can also try atitool. works like a charm atleast with my 7800gt.

Gah!!

I am getting really cheesed off.
I tried doing a clean up using driver cleaner pro, and then reinstalled the new driver.
Still didn't work.
In fact I can't find an archived version of my older driver, everywhere just has the new one.
I assume therefore that the new one has been tested and has no incompatibities except on my system.

I can't even start Battlefield 2142 now. I have uninstalled both the video driver and BF2142 twice and all that happens now is I get the loading screen when I select a map to play and it either hangs while loading or I get about 30 seconds into the game before it hangs.
Nothing then works, ctrl-alt-delete, ctrl-tab etc do nothing. My only option is a hard re-boot.

This has only happened since the new driver, I was having no problems with the old one. I only downloaded it because the new driver apparently works much better with lost planet.

Does it sound like a driver issue or do you think I may have burnt out my card somehow? Or possibly some other hardware issue (PSU maybe - although a hiper 580w type-r with 38a on 2 rails should be powerful enough)?
At the moment I am debating a reformat and reinstall of XP, but don't want to do this unless I have to.

Help!!!!!!

This shouldn't have to do with your problem but your psu has 30amps, not 38. FYI
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=205763

Interesting!
My PSU label says it has 20Amps on rail 1 and 18amps on rail 2. I know you never really get that much, but only 30amps? I've been robbed

How to figure amps you find the maximum wattage on the 12v combined and divide that by 12=amps on the 12v rails=amp figure for your psu. You don't just add 12Va + 12Vb. 30 is still good to run a 8800 though.