Uninstalling/Installing Drivers

[Pina Grande]

I was just curious as to the above question. Should one normally uninstall the old drivers before installing new drivers? I've always wondered that, since I've been given different answers by different people in the past. And if so how can you make sure you uninstall/delete all evidence of the old drivers? And is it necessary to do so?

Thanks.

 

[Pina Grande]

I did try the search function before posting, couldn't seem to find anything.

 

[Pina Grande]

Nothing? I didn't think it was that big of a question. >.<

Did I miss something or do something wrong?

 

[Cutthroat]

Sometimes it takes more than 45 min to get an answer...

It really depends on the driver you are talking about. Generally speaking I do not uninstall old drivers before installing new ones, unless it's a video driver. I always uninstall the old video driver from the control panel and then reinstall the new one. At one time installing new drivers on top of old, and not cleaning in between would leave remnants of older drivers on the system which may have affected performance and stability. I have noticed however that new Nvidia drivers do not leave any leftover files when they are uninstalled anymore on my Vista 64.