[Chaos_Being]

Good morning everyone,

I set up Vista 64-bit on a new drive (dual-booting with XP) on my main gaming pc last night. After it installed, it automatically downloaded drivers for my 8800gtx- however, these were old drivers. I uninstalled them through the control panel, booted into safe mode, and ran Driver Sweeper (got from guru3d, I had heard this program worked well with Vista 64.) Once I rebooted back into normal mode, I installed 175.16 Vista drivers. However, after they installed and rebooted, I noticed that I could no longer set Aero to work. I ran the "Vista Experience" (or whatever it is called) option from the Computer properties, and it scored my video card performance at 1.

Obviously, something is amiss with my drivers. However, when I went back to the Vista version of add/remove drivers, I don't see Nvidia drivers listed! Clicking on the properties of my video card in the Device Manager lists the proper driver number, however.

This is my first time really using Vista, so I'm confused. Did I do something wrong when I tried to update my drivers? How the heck can I uninstall and reinstall the drivers to get them to work now, if I don't see an uninstall option?

[joesaiditstrue]

you honestly don't need to use driver cleaner when you're just updating your drivers, i'd only recommend driver cleaner when changing brands (i.e. ATI to Nvidia, and vice-versa)

still, though, I don't know what would cause aero to stop functioning other than windows doesn't seem to think you have a card that's capable of DX9 effects

[Ashura]

In Device Manager, right click on your graphics card and hit Uninstall. There should be a checkbox that says delete installation files or something like that. Check that, uninstall, restart and then reinstall your driver.

[Chaos_Being]

Originally Posted by Ashura

In Device Manager, right click on your graphics card and hit Uninstall. There should be a checkbox that says delete installation files or something like that. Check that, uninstall, restart and then reinstall your driver.

I did that and it didn't uninstall the driver or the video card...I ended up just having to run Driver Sweeper in safe mode again to get rid of the drivers. However, I was then able to install new drivers (I decided to try the beta 177.79's,) and those installed fine. Aero works, the games I have installed on Vista so far work fine, and I have full access the the Nvidia control panel.

I still don't know why the 175.16's borked so badly, but at least everything is working now

[deathman20]

One thing I've learned when using nVidia cards in Vista 64-bit at least. You must uninstall the drivers. Its defiantly not as bad as it was last year, getting crashes and VPU recoveries all the time, but it can cause issues.

Doing a uninstall, driversweeper and reinstalling is the way to go. If necessary you might need to follow that sticky above to totally get rid of the nv*.dll's that are sitting in your windows directory.

[Chaos_Being]

Yeah I've always done the uninstall - driver cleaner/sweerper- reinstall thing, so why change now

I'll check the sticky you mention though, I've heard of people having problems with nvidia drivers on vista, luckily I have not encountered the crashing problems- just this strange corrupted install issue.