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  #1  
Old May 5th, 2017, 05:50 PM
Liz81 Liz81 is offline
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Should I use Display Driver Uninstaller?

I used it once because of a problem with my display driver and when I used it, it was cleaning out any junk for quite a while and that was making me nervous because I was thinking it was cleaning out more than I needed it to! So I looked around online and some say you shouldn't use unless you really have to because it messed up with some people's system files or things like that. Do many people have a bad experience with the Display Driver Uninstaller? All I needed was something to completely clean out any traces of my display driver so I can start over again with a new driver, rather than do a clean install on my system and reinstall everything. I don't think anything else needs to be done. Is the Display Driver Uninstaller known to do more than what is necessary for most people? Good or bad idea? What if something goes wrong? When I saw it done by someone on youtube, it was done within seconds but when I used it once before, it took a few minutes. Is that even normal?
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  #2  
Old May 5th, 2017, 08:13 PM
Appzalien Appzalien is offline
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I use DDU all the time and have never had a problem arise from it's use. It is recommended that you do a regular uninstall from the control panel (getting rid of all aspects installed by ati or geforce (physx ccc etc.) then run the DDU app from safe mode. You can't install your new graphics driver from safe mode though, since it doesn't have the installer it needs, you have to do it from inside windows.
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  #3  
Old May 6th, 2017, 04:59 PM
Digerati Digerati is offline
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I too have heard horror stories about DDU. It seems to be much more aggressive than most people need. You really should never need it. Windows is normally very capable of cleaning out the necessary drivers and files.

A complete system reinstall should ALWAYS be a last resort option.

What exactly are you trying to do? Tell us your system specs too. If you are trying to use a graphics card and your system has integrated graphics, I would pull the board and reboot. This should load the drivers for the integrated graphics, thus resetting all your graphics settings. That paves the way for a clean, fresh install of card's drivers.

You might also visit your graphics maker's website and see if they have an uninstaller.
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  #4  
Old May 7th, 2017, 05:32 PM
Appzalien Appzalien is offline
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Most errors occur when the user doesn't realize the difference between an nvida graphics driver and a motherboard that has nvidia chipsets on it. The older Driver Sweeper program was one of those that could be a little confusing as it listed so many different things. But with either app as long as you only choose software related to the video card you will be OK. Like I said before at least 50 runs between the Sweeper and DDU and no issues for me.
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  #5  
Old May 7th, 2017, 06:55 PM
Digerati Digerati is offline
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Quote:
Most errors occur when the user doesn't realize the difference between an nvida graphics driver and a motherboard that has nvidia chipsets on it.
"Most errors"? Huh?

Sorry, but that makes no sense. The brand has nothing to do with it. Windows is not going to confuse graphics drivers with chipset drivers and attempt to overwrite the one with the other.
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  #6  
Old May 8th, 2017, 03:42 AM
Appzalien Appzalien is offline
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No, what happens is when you run the uninstaller is gives you choices of what you want to uninstall. It's not always just Nvidia graphics or ATI. If the uninstaller lists other Nvidia things it detects on your system, you had better know what's what. I don't think DDU has that problem, but a few of the older ones did. I know cause I screwed up using one back in the win98se days. There was a screen that asked you to check remove all or remove only what I select and the choices might be Display ethernet IDE etc. That was Driver Sweeper I believe, but there was another one before that that was even more dangerous, since the way it listed things was way too vague. I can't remember the name but I bet I have it stored away on some old hard drive or CD.
Here's a page of what I'm talking about:
http://www.playtool.com/pages/uninst...uninstall.html
You can see from a few of the screen shots what is listed.

Last edited by Appzalien; May 8th, 2017 at 03:45 AM.
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  #7  
Old May 8th, 2017, 03:59 PM
Digerati Digerati is offline
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Quote:
No, what happens is when you run the uninstaller is gives you choices of what you want to uninstall. It's not always just Nvidia graphics or ATI. If the uninstaller lists other Nvidia things it detects on your system, you had better know what's what.
No! If you run the NVIDIA graphics driver uninstaller, it is going to uninstall the graphics driver. It is not going to list device drivers for the chipset or other NVIDIA products.

You are implying if you have an ASUS graphics card with an ASUS motherboard, or Gigabyte graphics card with an Gigibyte motherboard or MSI graphics card with an MSI motherboard and you decide to uninstall the drivers for the graphics card that you will be presented with the motherboard/chipset drivers too, and that users, if not careful, are going to pick the wrong ones. It does not work that way.
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  #8  
Old May 9th, 2017, 07:38 PM
Appzalien Appzalien is offline
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He's not talking about the Nvidia graphics uninstaller, he's asking about a third party uninstaller and they do uninstall other things besides Graphics. So if you have an MSI mainboard and it happens to have nvidia chipset drivers they might be listed as well. There can be Nvidia onboard graphics on an MSI board that is installed during chipset installation that is completely different from the graphics card drivers. Just tell him yes or no and leave it at that. I'm telling him to go ahead and use the uninstaller. I have had issues in the past where the windows uninstaller left too much behind that caused problems. Granted the uninstaller that comes with drivers these days does a better job than older version, I still like to be sure.

Last edited by Appzalien; May 9th, 2017 at 07:43 PM.
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  #9  
Old May 9th, 2017, 07:55 PM
Digerati Digerati is offline
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Quote:
he's asking about a third party uninstaller and they do uninstall other things besides Graphics.
If that is what you meant too then I agree and sorry for the misunderstanding.

But IMO, you illustrate my point. Today's Windows does not need 3rd party apps to uninstall drivers.
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