detonator destroyer vs format HD - new ATI card

[mrzed]

I'm off to pick up an 8500le, and I'm now running an MX400.

I will be reinstalling Windows in the next few weeks anyhow, but I was hoping to procrastinate. How well does detonator destroyer work? I am very picky about stabilty, so I'm not really interested in good enough if it means occasional lock ups.

XP Pro BTW.

 

[chizow]

Try the det destroyers, driver cleaner, reg cleaner, deleting nVidia folder etc. etc. first before you reformat. Unless you don't have much on your HDD and think reformatting would be faster.

Chiz

 

[mrzed]

Well I did some searching around, and it seems that detonator destroyer does not support XP yet, so format it is.

Unless manually removing the drivers is a reasonable option. Any thoughts, advice?

 

[Blooz1]

Go to the forum at Rage 3D.com, you'll find full instructions and lots of advise on this subject!

 

[Insidious]

I found this procedure in the GURU3D forums. It?s great for a total clean-up of old detonator driver before applying the new one.
I have never tried the portions in starz, so I can?t vouch for their effectiveness. The rest seemed to work great!
1) Run Regedit and navigate to this key.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr
entVersion
2) Record the locations entered in the "Device Path" value..
3) Search these locations and also, if not included, these below also for any nv3.*nf, nv4.*nf or nv4_disp.inf files and delete them.
C:\WINDOWS\System32\ReinstallBackups (allsubfolders)
C:\DRIVERS\VIDEO (for Dell Systems)
C:\WINDOWS\Inf (which should be the first entry in the device path)
4) Uninstall and reboot - you should be using the standard VGA controller at this point - but if not dont worry.

*********NEW SECTION OF ADVICE**********************
5) Add ";c:\nvidia" to the end of the device path value (without the quotation marks).
6) Create a folder at c:/nvidia and extract new drivers here.

Note: For future updates - extract new drivers to c:/nvidia then uninstall Dets and reboot- afterwards the new drivers will install automatically. Then reboot again and use the RefreshTool and then reboot again and you're ready to go.
***************************************************

7) Go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic

es\nv4 and delete this key.

Note: (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servi
ces\nv is the key which is used for detonator drivers whereas the nv4 is only for OEM and stock XP drivers)
8) Got to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro
l\Video
and delete any keys (eg. FF890-7895-7896-3611) which refer to detonator drivers.
(Uninstall drivers if not working under standard VGA) and reboot.
9) Drivers should now be installed automatically. Reboot and use the refreshTool. Reboot and you're ready to go.



****TO DISABLE AUTO-INSTALL OF ALL DRIVERS*********
Export the Device Path value in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr
entVersion for backup purposes.
Now delete the Device Path data (all the locations entered).
XP should not be able to auto-install drivers without you manually pointing to them.
***********************************************

 

[mrzed]

FWIW, I decided on clean install.

Up and running in XP now. I forget how easy it all is. Helps to have almost all my documents and data seperate from the system drive in the first place.

 

[BFG10K]

You don't need detonator destroyer or to reinstall Windows. Add/remove programs followed by simply a search in the registry for "nvidia" and geforce" will clean everything you need.

 

[Challenger]

I found a program called Driver Cleaner that works for Nvidia and ATI that works great.Here it is!