Leftover Nvidia Trash Files

[Cykoth]

This has been an issue I've been dealing with for a while, but I've just not fooled with it much because it's not hurting any of my video performance. When I first built my system, I had the 8800 GTX 512MB Nvidia card. I later chose to replace the card with the ATI HD 4890 (and I've been happy with that card, but am going to upgrade when the 6990 becomes available) Before I installed my new card, I went to Programs and Features (I'm running Vista SP2 32-bit) and properly removed the Nvidia display driver. Well, apparently there are a LOT of trash files that Nvidia left in several places that were NOT removed. So now, most every time I start my computer, I get a Windows notification of a Service not starting properly. If I look at the Services in Vista, sure enough I see a "Nvidia Display Driver Service" with no readily apparant way to delete/remove it. Looking at the properties I find these files in \windows\system32

nvcolor.exe
nvplui.exe
nvvsvc.exe

There are probably many more in other locations. Is there a good TRUSTWORTHY program that can ferret out all these files?

Thanks so much for helpful comments!

 

[Teizo]

Driver Sweeper. Next time you uninstall your driver, unistall in this order.

1) GPU driver, then reboot back into windows
2) PhysX driver, then reboot into safe mode
3) Run driver sweeper for both nVidia display and PhysX, reboot back into windows
4) Install driver and select Advanced>Clean install.

Driver Sweeper may not be necessary after doing this once though as the new nVidia installer allows for a clean install and will remove all the files of the previous driver supposedly.

 

[Absolution75]

To get rid of the windows service:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc742045%28WS.10).aspx

The service name is the shorthand name ex:
Application Experience service on windows 7 is 'AeLookupSvc'

sc help can help you as well.

As for start up programs, run msconfig and check the startup tab. It will show you where in the registry you can find the programs so you can delete the corresponding registry key.