Vista - clear old/wrong drivers

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This guide is provided for informational purposes only. If you choose to use this guide for anything more than information, you do so "At Your Own Risk".

• Vista has a utility built into it that will allow you to see what drivers the OS will install/re-install for your hardware. You need to check this OEM.inf driver repository after you uninstall your old drivers to make sure when you install the new drivers Vista will allow the updated driver to be used.

Steps to clean out old / wrong drivers from Vista

• Open a command prompt with admin rights and run the following command

pnputil.exe -e

• This will list out all of the oem.inf drivers for your system. Locate your display driver in the list, and make a note of what it's oemX.inf number is.

• Go into the control panel, select program management and uninstall your display drivers. Allow your computer to reboot after the driver removal is complete.

• Once rebooted open a command prompt again with admin rights and run the same command

pnputil.exe -e

• Look for your display driver again in the list.
  • If you do not see the driver, than the uninstall is complete and you can now install your new display driver.
  • If you do see the driver than proceed with this guide

• Run the following command to remove the driver

pnputil -d oemX.inf   (With X bring the number you made a note of earlier in this guide)

• If Vista finds the correct oemX.inf file it will remove it gracefully.

• Once Vista removes the driver reboot again and confirm that you do not see the driver in the list.

• You can now install your updated display drivers and Vista will use the newer driver.