How to Uninstall Nvidia Drivers

What are nVidia Drivers?

nVidia is a company that designs high end graphic chipsets for computers, gaming consoles and mobile devices. nVidia builds and supplies IC’s, graphical processing units, graphic cards and customized chipsets for major companies. Over the years, they have made their mark by releasing their range of products for gaming, digital content and mobile platforms.

nVidia was the first company to introduce a Unifier Shader Architecture called UFA and parallel computing architecture called CUDA. nVidia was also the first to introduce PhysX engine that was used to replicate motion of gravity for physical objects. They provide products and drivers for all PC, Mac, Workstations and Netbooks.

How to uninstall nVidia Drivers

After GeForce series nVidia provides a unified driver for all its range of graphical products. These drivers are multiple files packed in one .exe file, which installs itself in the OS. To remove this driver, you can uninstall using one of the following methods:

  1. Device Manager
  2. Control Panel
  3. Windows Installer Cleanup Utility
  4. Third-party software

Uninstall using Device Manager

Device manager is a repository that comprises all information related to the hardware and its related drivers. It provides options to repair, rollback, update and uninstall drivers.

To uninstall the nVidia drivers follow these steps –

  1. Click Start, select Run, type devmgmt.msc and press Enter to display the Device Manager window.
  2. Expand Display Adapters.
  3. Right-click on the nVidia driver and then select Uninstall.
  4. When the process is completed, close all the windows and restart the system

This will remove the driver from the system and once the system starts it will automatically install the default driver for the graphics card.

Uninstall using Control Panel

As nVidia provides a unified driver, it provides an uninstaller file for itself and this can be accessed from the Programs and options feature in Windows. To use this option and uninstall the nVidia driver follow these steps –

  1. Open Control Panel.
  2. Click on Program and Features in Windows Vista / 7 or Add and Remove Programs in Windows XP
  3. Select nVidia drivers from the list and click Uninstall or Change/Remove.

Follow the screen instructions to remove the nVidia driver and the software related to it.

Windows Installer Cleanup Utility

This application deletes all registry keys related to nVidia drivers from the Windows registry. You can download this cleanup utility from the Microsoft website.

Listed below are instructions to use the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility to clean up nVidia files:

  1. Close any applications related to nVidia.
  2. Click on Start and go to All programs.
  3. Click on Windows Install Clean up option.
  4. From the list of programs,  choose nVidia drivers.
  5. Click on the Remove button

This will remove all the registry keys related to nVidia drivers.

Using third party software – You can use these 2 software to remove nVidia drivers from the system completely as it is easy to install and saves alot of time.

Perfect Uninstaller – This provides an option to force uninstall an application with damaged files to ensure complete removal of unwanted programs and drivers.

RegGenie – This is a powerful registry removal software which helps in cleaning up registry keys related to nVidia from the system.