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Why DRIVER CLEANER is important (PICS)

U

UltimateMan

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 9, 2004
Messages
494
So I go to install some beta Forceware drivers (71.22) the other day and at one point in the install a missing file error occured and the installation had to stop. Being tired, hurried, and lazy, I decided against my better judgement to just install some other Forceware drivers (71.20) over top of the ones that failed to install correctly. I got a message "This file already exists, do you want to replace this file?" b/c of the failed install of the previous drivers, and again continued with the installation of the new drivers.

Long story short, I am playing UT2004 with these drivers installed and I noticed that the Image Quality was not up to snuff, with settings: 4x AA, 8x AS, High IQ, Clamp.

aa9zq.jpg


Notice the floor and the jaggies on the edges. There are jaggies everywhere! With 4x AA!??!

So I realized the err of my ways, bite the bullet, and unistall/reinstall my drivers (67.02)correctly with Driver Cleaner. Now here is a similar screen shot with the EXACT SAME IQ settings:

fixedaa4wd.jpg


Muuuuuuch better! NO JAGGIES!! (well, almost none)

Moral of the story, use driver cleaner whenever you install new drivers. Also, I realized that on a map that I was getting only 40FPS on with the old broken drivers I now get 60+ FPS
with the new drivers! That is a 20+ FPS increase!!!

USE DRIVER CLEANER!!

For those that don't know about this program and want to learn:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=752253
 
Driver cleaner does work nicely, I must say. Ive changed cards 4 times(9800pro>gf4MX>gf3>6800)and even changed mobos (both NF2 ultra 400+mcp) with the same format. Worked fine up untill I put in my 6800. I noticed some severe problems in a few games so I guess its just time for a format.
 
Oh God.

I feel like a complete Idiot.

I have never heard of this Software till I came to these Forums.

I have always installed 1 Driver ontop of another no probs though. Just recently Installed The Betas over the 66.XX that Nvidia has on their website. Hm...My Games all play right though, and I've never noticed a qual Decrease...

Back in the day, I use to uninstall the old Drivers, go to VGA mode, and install the new ones, but then, I really dont remember the reason I just stoped, and let it do its own thing...

NVIDIA drivers make their own version directories though, So I dont think its over-writing/screwing anything up... :confused:

Have I insanely Screwed up?
 
I used Driver Cleaner to successfully switch from ATi to nViia without a re-install of Windows. Havent had any issues, but a re-install is in the plans.
 
I still wipe old drivers with the good old search function and manual registry editing, developed a very good method which never fails me and works 100% of times :p

OldMX
 
I only use driver cleaner when I am changing brand names, From ATI to Nvidia for example. (last upgrade was from a 9550 Radeon to a 6800GT Geforce)
 
sculelos said:
I only use driver cleaner when I am changing brand names, From ATI to Nvidia for example. (last upgrade was from a 9550 Radeon to a 6800GT Geforce)
Click to expand...

Same here
 
RAutrey said:
Same here
Click to expand...

Again, same condition, only used driver cleaner when I went from Radeon 7000 -> GeForce 4 Ti4600 -> Radeon 9500 -> 6800U
 
The only time I ever had a similar problem to what he had was telling the installation "NO" when it asks about replacing the new file with an older one.
Since the driver filenames and registry entries are the same with each revision, they simply get overwritten every time you install a new driver. So there really isnt a need to use driver cleaner unless you are switching brands and want to get rid of the old brand's drivers. ie: Nvidia to ATI
BTW, next time just use driver rollback when you have a problem like that. There is no need to reinstall a driver Windows already has a copy of. Well, unless you used driver cleaner again.
 
You only need to boot in safe mode and uninstall the old drivers... driver cleaner works good but its not needed to do a correct install of new drivers.
 
OK all of these people saying "you only need to use DC if..."
You apparently haven't read the Sticky thread I linked to in the original post. It answers all of your questions about when and why to use DC. And NO, uninstalling in safe mode doesn't do the same thing.

Anyways, read that Sticky as it holds good info and has answers to all of your objections to using DC every time.
 
What i've done for the last year for my Nvidia cards is download the new driver extract it to a folder using winrar then I run NVXP-ALL.exe(point it to the folder I extracted the driver to and click install) available from Guru3d.com. From there I just go into the display properties settings>advanced>adaptor>properties>update driver and point to the folder I extracted the driver to and install the driver and reboot. Never had a problem yet.
 
i just followed a guide and wasted 2 hours of my life.. and now the card is not running like it used to.. i think i have to reformat cause of this little experiment with forceware.. thanks a fucking lot driver cleaner
 
I always use driver cleaner.

A while back I had an 8500LE. I eventually bought a 9700. So I uninstalled the 8500 drivers in XP and then shutdown and swapped cards. Then I downloaded the newest ATI drivers and installed them. My games definitely ran faster so I was happy and content. After a couple months though I started to notice my FPS weren't where they should be compared to what people were saying on the web so I ran 3dmark03 and I was WAY underperforming.

I tried all sorts of stuff, including driver udpates and nothing fixed it. Eventually I reimaged and that fixed the problem.

The later I installed new drivers and everything slowed down again. This time I looked for driver related answers and found out about driver cleaner. I installed it, used it, and reinstalled the drivers and I was back up to speed.

I have used it ever since and haven't had any problems, even when swapping my wifes PC from a 9700 to an X800XT-PE and then later to a 6800Ultra.
 
abudhu said:
Oh God.

I feel like a complete Idiot.

I have never heard of this Software till I came to these Forums.

I have always installed 1 Driver ontop of another no probs though. Just recently Installed The Betas over the 66.XX that Nvidia has on their website. Hm...My Games all play right though, and I've never noticed a qual Decrease...

Back in the day, I use to uninstall the old Drivers, go to VGA mode, and install the new ones, but then, I really dont remember the reason I just stoped, and let it do its own thing...

NVIDIA drivers make their own version directories though, So I dont think its over-writing/screwing anything up... :confused:

Have I insanely Screwed up?
Click to expand...

Oh yea, you're probably missing out on a boat load of frames and image quality that have been lossed through conflicting files and what not. Uninstall your video drivers, use driver cleaner in safe mode, restart, use it again if you have to, hehe, and reinstall the new ones and tell us the difference.
 
U should never go back in a driver version without using D Cleaner, but going to a next release is just fine as newer versions always overwrite their brethren. U went backward to 71.20 and thats why this happened.
 
chinoquezada said:
i kinda asumed that by now everyone used driver cleaner...
Click to expand...


No.. I'm really crazy.. Every time I change a signifigant piece of hardware (such as video card, motherboard.. ) I reinstall my OS

Even better than driver cleaner :)
 
minc3d said:
U should never go back in a driver version without using D Cleaner, but going to a next release is just fine as newer versions always overwrite their brethren. U went backward to 71.20 and thats why this happened.
Click to expand...

Sweet, thats what I thought. I am golden then :D
 
Laforge said:
No.. I'm really crazy.. Every time I change a signifigant piece of hardware (such as video card, motherboard.. ) I reinstall my OS

Even better than driver cleaner :)
Click to expand...
there is no point on reinstalling windows for vid card change...

and there is a way to change your mobo without reinstalling windows but its kinda hard...
 
chinoquezada said:
there is no point on reinstalling windows for vid card change...

and there is a way to change your mobo without reinstalling windows but its kinda hard...
Click to expand...

Er, I didn't even know that theres any real reason to reinstall the OS when changing the motherboard. Or are you joking?
 
robberbaron said:
Er, I didn't even know that theres any real reason to reinstall the OS when changing the motherboard. Or are you joking?
Click to expand...
check the sticky in the os forums
 
minc3d said:
U should never go back in a driver version without using D Cleaner, but going to a next release is just fine as newer versions always overwrite their brethren. U went backward to 71.20 and thats why this happened.
Click to expand...

Could be... I figure that the reason I had sooo many problems was because of the ERROR in installing the 71.22s. Then when that didn't work I got lazy and installed 71.20 w/o DC.

Interestingly my dad's machine had some problems recently due to driver updates with ATI (9800Pro) When he went from 4.11 to 4.12 he couldn't run 3DMark03 or play Silent Hill 4 Demo b/c it said "This application requires a video adapter with at least 32mb memory and vertex and shader support."

After using driver cleaner ect everything now runs fine. Anyone else have this prob with 4.11 --> 4.12 w/o using driver cleaner?
 
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