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How often do you use DDU in safe mode to uninstall GPU drivers?

Arclite

Arclite

Arclite

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I was speaking to a colleague at work who has a 4090 and he was saying that he always has issues with his gpu drivers when he installs them through Geforce experience app. I asked him if he knew about the DDU and uninstalling the drivers in safe mode and he did not know.

So wondering how often, if ever, do folks uninstall their GPU drivers through DDU in safe mode?

I still believe that doing it through normal windows operation or through AMD/Nvidia's own app can create bugs and/or issues.
 
I'll DDU if I'm changing the GPU for something else. Otherwise I'll always just use the driver's control panel to update over the top of what's already on there.

I really find little issue with just using the normal uninstaller these days also. For the most part DDU is more of a "something weird is going on, lets do that just to rule drivers out" kind of thing.
 
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Completely forgot that DDU existed as I used to use that religiously when updating drivers about 20 years ago or so! Or a very similar program if it wasn't this one.

Now a days, most things work perfectly with the standard upgrade process, if keeping the same GPU manufacturer.

It's probably a good shout to use it if you're having issues etc but for 95% of people it's probably not needed.

If I was going to a new GPU manufacturer I'd most likely rebuild windows from scratch anyway, rather than use a tool to cleanup for me.
 
heatonpkmassive said:
Only if changing from AMD to NVidia or vice versa, if it's a new GPU from the same manufacturer, just a regular uninstall and reinstall of the driver. Done this for years.
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Ditto.

Even then that's seldom as I usually take it as an opportunity to install a clean version of windows on it.

That'll stop mind, ditching windows after 10.
 
This is incredible really, I always thought that DDU was the way to go. Its not an overly lengthy process to use DDU but still a few more levers to pull. I will try doing a recent update through GeForce app.

May be I had developed this thing in my head for far too long.

Thanks!
 
I've very rarely had to do this. I think there was one "bad" driver in the first half of last year (around the time Diablo 4 came out) when I did this before rolling back to an earlier version. Other than that, I've just been updating via the Geforce Experience for years.
 
Basically never. I've only used it in the case of having issues, and it's never solved those issues.
It's still in my head space in case of issues after a gpu change or driver update if something doesn't behave correctly, but I simply haven't had an issue that required trying it out (rather than at most un/reinstalling the driver normally) in many, many years, maybe since win 7 came out? Or vista...
 
Extremely rarely, only if there's major driver issue where installing a new or old one over the top doesn't fix it, 99% of the time doing that works fine. I'll only DDU as a last resort or if I'm changing to AMD but I haven't used an AMD card since the 5870 so haven't done that in many years.

If I'm going from say a 4090 to 5090 I'd just give the drives a quick reinstall over the top as they will be the same ones anyway.
 
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