Simple question for someone familiar with XP

[Chain777]

This is probably simple for those of you who have "some" experience with WinXPpro, but I'm brand new to it, and used to Win98se. The problem is: I want to replace a driver (ATI Radeon display driver), and the first step is to uninstall the old driver, which I finally found after finding device managers new home in XP. Anywany, I removed the driver, restarted Windows, and XP automatically detected the ATI card, reinstalled all the "old" drivers, and left me right where I started.

How can I prevent XP from reinstalling drivers automatically on restart? Is there a better method to update drivers in XP? ATI's site isn't much help on this, as they still explain uninstalling XP drivers though start-control panel-add/remove programs (Win98se way); which seems completely different on XP. If you have any help on this, I'd appreciate it.

Thank for any feedback.

 

[Epyon9283]

I dont know if this is the best way, but I just install newer drivers over the old ones. It has worked pretty well so far.

 

[KenCleanAirSystem]

Keeping your old drivers is actually a good thing in XP. If you install a new set of drivers and its not stable you can roll back to the last installed drivers.

 

[Slogun]

I know what you're talking about. It has long been accepted wisdom to uninstall video drivers and revert back to super VGA before installing new video drivers. I have been using XP for two months now and I haven't yet found a way to acomplish it.
I have also had to simply install the newer drivers.

 

[MulLa]

2K / XP are pretty safe to simply use the update driver button or simply install the new version over the old ones. I have done it plenty of times under both 2k/XP and it works find so far. It's only 98 that I normally uninstall the old drivers first.

I think that's the procedure stated in the instructions in countless Detonator drivers that I've tried.

 

[Insidious]

I think it is best to use the device manager (hardware, driver) and click on the update drivers button. (This means you need to have unzipped the (new) downloaded video drivers to some directory, then tell XP not to search for drivers and point to them using "have disk" and browse.

I think if you try to use the self-installing feature on downloaded drivers you may have trouble. XP seems to do a good job of disabling the old drivers, but saving them so if you have trouble with the new ones, you can go back to the device manager and use the "roll back" button to restore them.

 

[btvillarin]

I also just install the newer ones right over the default drivers. No problems have happened, and I can roll back if something does occur.