Stop Windows 7 Drivers

mthomas99

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Dec 15, 2005
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How do you stop windows 7 from installing graphics card drivers after a FRESH install of windows or during it?

Everytime I re install windows 7 it installs graphics card drivers and I don't know how to completely remove the drivers it has installed. I go to control panel and uninstall before installing nvidia's drivers, but I think there is a conflict from remnants of the old windows drivers because of flickering textures I receive in games. The flickering is not bad enough to constitute artifacts I think. The flickering comes when panning around reflective surfaces - usually floors. nothing occurs when freelook is holding still on a texture, just when it's moving around.


8800gts 320mb
i5 2500k
asus p8p67 -- newest bios
 

Griffolion

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May 28, 2009
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When a graphics card is plugged in, Windows will automatically install generic VGA drivers to power the graphics card at a basic level. They do nothing to affect proper drivers as they are automatically overridden by ATI or Nvidia drivers when they are installed. There is a possibility your card has begun to die (artefacts may get worse over time) due to it's age. It may also because of v-sync issues, turn v-sync and triple buffering on in games and it may be alleviated. But i seriously doubt its to do with Windows drivers. There MAY be some conflict with OLDER ATI or Nvidia driver that haven't been wiped properly, for that i suggest downloading Driver Sweeper and giving the unused drivers a good going over. But these usually cause very decisive problems, like a Blue Screen, not something like this.
 

Griffolion

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Yeah, that's the standard way to do it. Windows detects the card, installs its own basic drivers before you can bat an eyelash. You then go to install the Nvidia drivers which override the Windows basic drivers. That's the regular way of doing it.
 

mthomas99

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Dec 15, 2005
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Do you have to go into Device Manager and go to the Graphics cards properties and ultimately choose to "Update" the device drivers (or uninstall them) before proceeding with Nvidia drivers? or you do download the nvidia drivers to desktop and install the nvidia drivers without UNINSTALLing or even looking at the device manager?

Before installing the nvidia drivers this time around I changed the group policy on my machine to disallow windows from updating/installing any drivers. I then uninstalled the graphics cards windows drivers - restarted - used CCleaner and then installed new NVIDIA drivers.

I cannot find D/L driver sweeper any longer from guru3d.