If, for some reason, your NVIDIA GPU-powered graphics card decides that it doesn’t want to kick into 3D mode — that is, switch from low clock speeds to high ones for heavier demands such as gaming — the usual fix is to reboot your machine. Sometimes this can be inconvenient to do, fortunately, there is a way to get your card running normally without slamming the power button.
On machines running Windows Vista or later, reinstalling your NVIDIA card’s latest drivers will convince it to return to its proper running state. There’s no need to select the “Perform a clean installation option”, just locate or download the driver version you want and install it right over the top.
If you want to find uncompressed versions of recent NVIDIA drivers you’ve used, you can usually find them in the folder C:\NVIDIA\DisplayDriver
, if you follow the standard installer options.
Image: NVIDIA
Comments
5 responses to “‘Reset’ Your NVIDIA Graphics Card By Reinstalling Its Drivers”
Umm, I take it this isn’t a problem with ATI cards then.?
Normally you are correct. However a clean uninstall is actually the best way to ensure that your system has the most update to date NVIDIA drivers and supporting components (a.k.a rjohnson11-EVGA volunteer forum moderator)
How is this more convenient than rebooting your PC?
Besides, driver installs generally require a reboot.
They don’t with 7 at least.
Then again there is the time involved in downloading and installing the new drivers which is rather longer than a reboot takes
Yup. SSD + UEFI mobos mean reboots are painless. Also, I wasn’t aware that NVIDIA cards had these problems…
my Ati card has been doing this now for a few weeks, randomly I jump into a game, and the frame rate is hopeless ! so I reboot and its fine after that. perhaps I should re install the drivers too