Driver problem

I have a really annoying problem I can't seem to sort and don't understand why, previous times I've updated my nvidia driver have all worked fine and have been through the geforce experience.

A week or so back I noticed a empty spot on my desktop shortcuts,traced it and found the geforce shortcut had just vanished,only to find I have the Nvida app instead,I've since tried to update the driver through that and it fails,either express or custom,I downloaded the driver direct from Nvidia and run it,still fails!! why is it not working? and is there a easy way to fix it?

The NVIDIA APP should now deal with updates, whats it showing under the Drivers Tab?

Same as it always does as I've not updated for a while the latest version which 19th may 572.56 I think,I have already tried going through the nvidia app,both express and custom,fails each time.
I downloaded the drivers via nvidia and tried a manual install,same thing!! I never used to have problems.

Harleygjc said:

Same as it always does as I've not updated for a while the latest version which 19th may 572.56 I think,I have already tried going through the nvidia app,both express and custom,fails each time.
I downloaded the drivers via nvidia and tried a manual install,same thing!! I never used to have problems.

Click to expand...

DDU Instructions - Nvidia
1. First, do Option #2, step #3 and onward, here...
2. This will block MS from including drivers in Windows Updates.
3. They'll still be listed in the Optional Updates, if you ever need them.


1. Get this program, here: Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) | Wagnardsoft ...get the latest version, and save it to your desktop.
2. Get the Nvidia WHQL vid card driver here... Nvidia drivers - manual search ...save this to your desktop. Unhook the internet completely.
3. Reboot into Safe Mode and run DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) choose the "Highly Recommend Option", and just do what it tells you.
4. After it's done, reboot to normal mode, then just double click the Nvidia driver to install.
[See pics below]. If it want's to reboot, let it.
Rehook the internet.

I have high anxiety and feel a bit nervous trying this idea,what worries me is if the manual try failed what guarantees are there trying this it will work? What I don't understand is why when I tried downloading the driver and installing it it failed again,I'm worried if I try the ddu method and then a manual install again that it fails again,then I'm really stuck

@Harleygjc I just went through this on my system 2. Try an earlier version. The later versions are more for 40xx or 50xx cards.

Click on the perform clean installation check box.

You're not stuck, just uninstall the bad driver, download and install an older driver, lets say 5-10 versions back.

I know games and some gamers insist you must have latest drivers.

That is nonsense, in fact the latest is much more likely to be beta-ish, and mainly for Nvidia latest video chipsets.
They will do nothing for older chipsets like your RTX 3060 Ti.

I use a RTX 3070 Ti and that is on driver 546.30 works fine and passes test checks. That is probably ~20 versions behind the latest.
So you have a vast choice of working and stable drivers.

"I can't seem to sort and don't understand why"
Reasons will be complex and not understandable for the vast majority of consumers, but for sure you can do something about it quite easily as in my 1st sentence.

The thing is,I've tried,the only reason I went to upgrade is two of my steam games are now refusing to run,Doom Enternal which used to run on the driver I;m using now gives a incompatible driver and doesn't run and No Mans Sky,which has run fine on this driver for over a year now gives vulkan vkcreateinstance failed error on start,only solution I've found is to upgrade driver,but for some reason I can't either if I go through Nvidia or download manually it always fails to install,that's what I don't get,why does it always fail?

I'm not sure


New versions of the driver are implementing ray tracing support in the Vulkan API, there may be some bugs.

But everything works in the video player (driver ver. 576.40)