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Confused: removing ati drivers / catalyst

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11 Dec 2009
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703
So I've decided to switch from my trusty 4890 to the 480se and am looking at what I need to do to remove the ATI catalyst and drivers in preparation for using the nvidea card.

Honestly I'm more confused than before I started. Searching these forums and elsewhere suggests that Catalyst and the drivers are tricky to fully remove and can cause issues if it's not done just right. I wondered if there is any kind of consensus on what does / does not need to be taken out?

I'm running Win 7 home 64bit, installed just over a year ago, not yet on sp1. The card was installed during OS installation and I haven't touched it since - think I'm running catalyst 10.2.

Some guides suggest going Remove programs > catalyst > change > Uninstall. Some suggest just uninstall directly. Others mention an ATI tool to uninstall. Then there is Driver Sweep (or some such) and Reg Cleaner that some posters swear by and others suggest these hose the system files needed for future driver and service pack updates.

Guess I'm looking to get the consensus on these boards and hopefully an idea how to swap cards with minimal disruption and without totally reinstalling the OS.
 
Thanks for all the replies. I'll avoid the 3rd party programs as I suspect Win 7 is more robust than XP. I'll use Remove > Change > uninstall catalyst from Safe Mode and see if the system behaves.
 
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