What is a Driver Cleaner? What does it do? How do you use it?

Question

I am having problems with my 03 Dimension 4600's NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200. I recently upgrade the driver to NVIDIA's 93.71 Forceware drive and while it was installing the driver it popped up with   Error in NvCpl.dll  Missing Entry: NvCpl Update Persist Data. Press OK   I did and it went on with the installition. Pretty much nothing strange has occurred since then; just that I worry how to  fix the problem. I have been reading many other problems with the NVIDIA  drivers and people have suggested in using diver cleaner, and having to unistall components of the driver in the process. How drastic is this, are there any risks, do I (is it necessary to) have to do a system restore? Are there other options to do this because I did a rollback of my driver before I installed the Forceware Driver.  I found a link in another post in the Dell forums suggesting this driver cleaner  http://www.3dchipset.com/utilities/ati/driver_removal/dclean.php.   Thank You

Kenster102.5 · Answer

So would I first rollback my driver to the original driver again then use driver cleaner to delete most of the original driver for the card (meaning the driver that was installed with the computer) or do I use driver cleaner on the driver that I recently downloaded. Can you please guide me through the steps.

SR45 · Answer

I never had any risk with using the driver cleaner, which hunts down most all, if not all the old driver, cleaning your system of the old code to install another driver.

http://www.drivercleaner.net/ Driver Cleaner Pro download site. ( Now they are charging $10 for the program, where it was free before. You can try to manually clean out the old driver if you wish, but this is still a good program to have around )

Free version that you might want to use ...

http://www.3dchipset.com/utilities/ati/driver_removal/dclean.php

Make sure you download another current driver and have it ready on the desktop to install after cleaning the other one off

Dim 4400
2.6 Ghz 400 FSB
1 Gb 2100 DDR memory
Windows XP Home
40 Gb Seagate 7,200 drive
120 Gb Seagate 7,200 drive
24 inch 2407 WFP
XFX 7800 GS O/C AGP
16x DVD-R
Symantec Internet Security 2007
410 watt ( PcPower&Cooling )

Message Edited by SR45 on 12-24-200607:41 AM

SR45 · Answer

What I do is uninstall the old driver from Add/Remove program, use the driver cleaner twice, than reboot the system.  After which I install the new driver that I had already saved to the desktop.  Simple   1.  Download a good current driver for that card, and save it to the desktop.  Some like the most current, and some experiment with other drivers.    2.  Uninstall the old driver from Add/Remove program   3.  Use the driver cleaner twice for best results   4.  Reboot the system   5.  Install the new driver that you have saved to the desktop.  If by chance you get a notice of a new hardware pop up in the system tray, in the lower right side of the screen, disregard this.  Just go and install the driver that you downloaded and follow the instructions   6.  It will ask you if you want to reboot the system after installing the driver.  Click OK   7.  The system will reboot, and you may or may not see your monitors fonts, and screen larger after it reboots.  If it shows a larger screen, than go into Display Properties to change the screen resolution to the native settings for your screen. If your screen is normal, just leave it alone.  Need any assistance on this, post back here.

Kenster102.5 · Answer

Thank you for all your help. Everything works well.

SR45 · Answer

Good news to hear.  Welcome Kenster

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