You don’t need to do a clean install every time your driver updates, as usually, all you need to do is just update the driver and everything is okay. However, sometimes you have to do a clean install to prevent conflicts and issues that a corrupted driver might cause. A clean installation is also recommended when you have replaced your graphics card, as the old graphics drivers might interfere with the performance of the new graphics card. Now that you know about clean installation and its uses, let’s move on to how to clean install a driver.
STEP 1. Download New Drivers
Now, once your driver is downloaded, we will uninstall the existing driver.
STEP 2. Uninstall the Existing Driver
There are two ways to perform a clean install of an Nvidia driver: Usually, the first method works fine for most users. However, in some cases, using DDU may be necessary to ensure no residual files and settings conflict with your current driver. Note: Clean installation will remove all the settings and configurations. So, be prepared to reconfigure your graphics driver once you follow the methods mentioned below. Now that we know about both methods, let’s check the step-by-step procedure of both methods.
Method 1. Clean Installation Through Nvidia Installer:
Now, test and check if everything is working properly and reconfigure your settings and configurations. If anything is wrong, you can follow the procedure using DDU below.
Method 2. Clean Install using Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU):
Now your computer will boot up again and it might have a weird low-resolution mode. Do not be alarmed by that, as it’s completely normal for Windows to boot your computer in low-resolution mode if it doesn’t find any driver installed for your graphics card. At this point, it might be necessary to pause Windows updates for 1-2 hours, as it may try to install Nvidia drivers automatically. This can ruin the installation process, as it’s been reported many times that Windows updates install older or buggy drivers that aren’t usually compatible with your graphics driver properly. This is especially the case with laptops, as their manufacturers tend to customize the Nvidia driver before deploying it to better optimize the driver for that specific hardware. To stop Windows updates temporarily: “Select Start > Settings > Windows Update. Next to Pause updates, in the dropdown list, select Pause for 1 week, then click Pause for 1 week.” You can learn more about this on the official Dell support article. Once paused, we can continue with the installation process. Installation steps are the same as those mentioned in the first method, so just follow those steps and you should be good to go.
