BleepingComputer.com: STOP automatic video driver install

This is driving me nuts. I'm all ready to upgrade my computer to a pair of new video cards and PSU, but after trying to uninstall the video drivers, Windows 7 just automatically installs them again after restarting without prompting me! How do I stop this? I want to not only uninstall, but run Driver Sweeper also, that way I know no remnants of any old drivers remain so I can install a fresh one for the new cards.

I already went into Device Installation Settings and told Windows to let me choose what to do and to never install driver software from Windows Update. I get the feeling that only applies to peripherals and not hardware.

Please help! I got everything all laid out this morning for this upgrading project!

Thanks!

Is your current video card integrated? if it is then you need to go into the BIOS and disable the onboard video card.

cryptodan, on 19 February 2011 - 09:40 AM, said:

No, it's not. It's a pair of 8800GTs in SLI and upgrading to 460GTXs. I've done this plenty of times before and built the rig. I just need stupid Windows 7 (64-bit) to stop doing me favors by automatically installing the video drivers after I uninstall them

If you are upgrading, from nVidia to nVidia there is no reason to remove the drivers. Download and install the latest drivers, and remove the old cards then install the new ones. If you were going from Integrated or ATI to nVidia then yes youd want to remove all older drivers, and with nVidia there is now an option to perform a clean install under Custom Installation.

cryptodan, on 19 February 2011 - 09:46 AM, said:

But if I installed the new drivers for the 460GTXs, won't that interfere with the 8800GTs that I have in there now? I don't want to fry my computer because the wrong drivers are installed before I could install the new cards.

Also, where is this clean install in custom installation for NVIDIA? I've never seen it.

I'd MUCH rather uninstall the drivers, run Driver Sweeper and have my computer run in VGA mode and THEN install the new cards and drivers. I know I'm not the only the one who feels this way.

nVidia uses a Unified Driver Format which installs drivers for all supported video cards under the OS from one file. there are no specific card drivers for each nVidia Card. The newest drivers will work on any nVidia Card as long as it supports it.

cryptodan, on 19 February 2011 - 10:06 AM, said:

All right, I'll do that as a last resort, but I REALLY want to get rid of my old drivers, how do I do that?

P.S. How do I go about doing the clean install? Can you point me to a web page that details this?

This post has been edited by Venek: 19 February 2011 - 10:08 AM

Its on that page when you go to install the new drivers for your new cards. You are really complicating this process more then it needs to be. The drivers you will install for the 460's will be the same drivers that you would install if you were to upgrade your current drivers.

Well, it's done and I'm up and running. I'm pretty shocked at the loooooooow temps of my new video cards compared to my old 8800GTs (which I know were hot to begin with, but I had bought the AKIMBO editions to cool 'em off, but still...)

As it turns out, by swapping out my PSUs (and finally making good use of cable management), my computer recognized ALL hardware as new and started installing its down drivers. A little annoying, but I installed the latest NVIDIA drivers in safe mode anyway. I was way more concerned with my computer being up and running than the drivers.

The only problem is that the old existing drivers appear to still sit in my C:/NVIDIA folder. I want to delete them, but not going to for fear of goofing up the system somehow. Can you tell I'm a little paranoid about these things? (Had a few bad experiences, that's my story).

You can delete that folder, as that is used to reinstall and as a temp extract point to extract all2 the files needed to install the drivers.