Nvidia Control Panel won't see new games

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evilsofa

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I'm using Windows 7 64bit. In the Nvidia Control Panel -> Manage 3D Settings -> Program Settings area, if I check "Show only programs found on this computer", it only sees Freelancer, Neverwinter Nights (nwn.exe), Valve Steam (steam.exe), Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Windows Explorer. Freelancer and Neverwinter Nights were removed long ago (last year), and I have gone through the hard disk and registry removing any trace of them. New games that I have installed never show up. I am not able to make the list change. When I select new games by browsing with the "Add" button, new entries are added to the list next to the old entries with the same name, making it difficult for me to know if the profiles are even working.

This persists through removing old Nvidia drivers and installing new ones. In my latest attempt to get rid of this, I have used the uninstall function in the Programs And Features control panel, booted to Safe Mode, then used Driver Sweeper to remove all Nvidia drivers, then used search to remove all traces of Nvidia from both the hard drive and the registry, then installed the latest 258.96 WHQL drivers, and the issue is still there. Clicking the "Restore Defaults" link in the upper right corner of the Manage 3D Settings panel returns the list of programs found on this computer to include Freelancer and Neverwinter Nights, making me think there's a default file hidden somewhere that's overriding everything.

How is this possible?
 
The nvidia control panel is completely fucked. Has been since the 160's forceware i believe. Thats why everyone loves to use the program Nhancer, however there hasnt been an update yet for the 250 series of drivers.

If you keep playing with the settings in there, it'll eventually break and stop loading any custom exes in there. Great fun.

Some old advice i found for it playing up refered to a nvapps.xml file that was read only, and thus causing the majority of the errors. However it seems they've stopped using that system since the 190 series.

If anyone can actually shed some light on the situation that isnt just "reinstall, clean your system, driver sweep", that'd be appreciated, however theres little of that out there.
 
7 months later, I finally found the answer on WSGF:

"Running windows 7 x64 here and noticed that many of my games do not show in the Nvidia control panel. After you "Add" one of the .exe's you have have to re-add it every time you want to go in and change settings. This bothered me for the longest time and I finally found a solution at least on Windows 7 and probably on Vista as well since both of these OS's have a "Games" folder in the All Programs list.

When the Nvidia control panel installs it apparently checks this folder for installed games but doesn't check the Steam/steamapps/common/ folder. Just create a shortcut to the game .exe's and put it in the Games folder and tada... Nvidia control panel shows them as installed now and you can select them from the profile list."

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=23010
 
Or just use nvidia inspector to change the game profiles. Even if the control panel doesn't list the game, the drivers still load the profile when you run the it.
 
I now have some more specific info. The file path in Windows 7 64bit is:

C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Games\

On my system, a few other games and apps showed up in NCP that were not in that folder, but I was unable to find out where those came from.

Vista and XP users will have to figure out the equivalent places to look, but now that you have the general idea, it shouldn't be too hard.
 
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