When was the last time you *had* to do a clean driver install?

[mikeymikec]

That is, you had a problem, tried updating drivers, the problem didn't go away, so therefore you responded with a clean driver install (whether you used some third party tool or if the driver install package came with the option), and it fixed the problem.

I personally can't remember ever having to do it, and I wonder whether the people who advocate clean driver installs generally do it as a precaution, or they do it at the same time at least one other technique to fix the problem (such as the actual driver update fixed the problem, not the fact that it was 'cleanly installed'), ergo they don't know which tactic resolved the issue.

Just curious.

 

[Deders]

I had to yesterday after the Windows 10 fall update. 2 of the PhysX options were unavailable in Arkham knight. A normal re-install would have noted that the same PhysX version was already installed and skipped over it. I had to do a clean install to get it to remove it and start again.

I'd hate to think what would have happened if the driver was only available from Ge-Force Experience which in its present state would have just told me that everything was installed and not given me the option to re-download.

I do tend to do a clean install anyway, there have been a couple of occasions where a normal install has resulted in problems hanging over from the previous version.

 

[guskline]

I also did a clean install of the Windows 10 fall upgrade on my 4790k rig below.

The update worked on my 5960x rig but I kept getting error messages on the upgrade for the 4790k rig so I downloaded the latest Win 10 ISO and did a clean install.

 

[Techhog]

I had to yesterday after the Windows 10 fall update. 2 of the PhysX options were unavailable in Arkham knight. A normal re-install would have noted that the same PhysX version was already installed and skipped over it. I had to do a clean install to get it to remove it and start again.

I'd hate to think what would have happened if the driver was only available from Ge-Force Experience which in its present state would have just told me that everything was installed and not given me the option to re-download.

I do tend to do a clean install anyway, there have been a couple of occasions where a normal install has resulted in problems hanging over from the previous version.

The update reset some of the driver settings. All that you had to do was set PhysX to use the GPU to fix that issue, since it was set to the CPU after the update for some reason.

 

[Deders]

The update reset some of the driver settings. All that you had to do was set PhysX to use the GPU to fix that issue, since it was set to the CPU after the update for some reason.

Interesting, thanks. I wonder what other driver settings were changed in other drivers. I had to roll back to the previous build because of random restarts.

 

[Charlie98]

I do tend to do a clean install anyway, there have been a couple of occasions where a normal install has resulted in problems hanging over from the previous version.

That's me, too.

Only time I had a problem was with my old HD6450 HTPC card... in that case, even rolling back the driver didn't work, I had to restore a backup image. Don't know what happened, but, thankfully, I make an image before updating drivers like that.

I've had less problems with nVidia drivers, but I've pretty much stopped updating the drivers on my GTX560 and 760.

 

[Piroko]

That is, you had a problem, tried updating drivers, the problem didn't go away, so therefore you responded with a clean driver install (whether you used some third party tool or if the driver install package came with the option), and it fixed the problem.

I had to do that a lot in the early Vista days, but I don't think I ever had to after Vista SP1. Nowadays I don't even do a clean install between switching out hardware anymore.

 

[MagickMan]

Not since XP.

 

[Techhog]

Are we only counting tiomes that the problem was actually fixed by a clean install?

 

[mikeymikec]

Are we only counting tiomes that the problem was actually fixed by a clean install?

Clean driver install, yup. At least I am. I'm curious to know in what situations it actually made any difference for people.

 

[tential]

I had to do that a lot in the early Vista days, but I don't think I ever had to after Vista SP1. Nowadays I don't even do a clean install between switching out hardware anymore.

I just popped my 290 in over the 7950 and kept going. I plan to do the same with arctic Islands.

 

[bystander36]

The only time I've had to do a clean driver install was after upgrading to Windows 10.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Last month. But I was installing proprietary nVidia drivers in Linux, and I had to remove the FOSS ones because they didn't support a GTX 970 yet.

So I'm not sure if that's really what you're looking for.