Video Card related -- how to delete, clean out, and reinstall ALL drivers

[WhipperSnapper]

Last night I wanted to play Neverwinter Nights, which I've had installed on my computer for over a year. I hadn't had any problems with it in the past, but I hadn't played it for months and when I went to load it up, I kept getting the Microsoft error box. During that downtime I uninstalled and reinstalled a couple drivers.

OK, so I simply uninstalled NwN and went to do a fresh reinstall. When I went to use the auto-config in the video settings area, I received this error:

Access violation at address 7C901010 in module ?ntdll.dll?. Read of address 00000034.

I deleted the Catalyst driver, downloaded and installed the new Catalyst 7.9, reinstalled the game, and tried again. Same message.

So, what should I do? I'm thinking about completely deleting all of my video, (integrated) soundcard, and motherboard drivers, wiping it all clean, perhaps with a driver cleaner program, and starting it over.

Is that a good idea? What would be the best way to go about it? Should I use a driver cleaner and if so, which one? Would that mess up lots of other games and programs?

 

[Sylvanas]

Driversweeper to the rescue if you are using Vista be sure to start driver sweeper by right clicking the exe and going 'run as administrator' and then you are set to remove a whole multitude of drivers from chipset, sound and video. Since Driverheaven made it that you had to pay for drivercleaner this is the better option IMO. I would NOT recommend removing chipset drivers as they can cause some trouble and be sure to use the new 7.10's on re installation. Cant go wrong with a reformat either but thats really the last option .

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Thanks for the link. I'm on Win XP Pro. When you say don't remove the chipset drivers--are you referring to the motherboard's nVidia driver?

I'm on a Socket 939 nForce4 mobo. Should I go download the latest one from nVidia or just use the older one from the Epox site?

 

[Sylvanas]

When updating chipset drivers (motherboard drivers) I have found no problems in just downloading the latest and installing it over the current so in this case get the latest ones from Nvidias site.