Exercise caution when using Display Driver Uninstaller (Driver Sweeper)

Hi folks. I'm sure a lot of you have used the brilliant little tool that was once known as Driver Sweeper at least once in your lifetime to rid your computer of old drivers, and driver related files. The tool provided by Guru3D has "been replaced" by a new application called Display Driver Uninstaller. Whether or not this is a reincarnation of Driver Sweeper, or a completely new application isn't made clear on the webpage.

After using it to uninstall my Nvidia video drivers last night I was surprised at the condition of Windows 7 after I rebooted my computer.

• Windows was unable to install its own generic video driver

• Explorer.exe was not running, and could not execute because the "class was not registered"

• Wireless adapter was missing, and Windows was unable to install a new driver
  for it due to an obscure error code

• After several minutes of trial, and error I decided to preform a system restore, this however failed with another error code.

Perhaps what occurred with my computer last night was just a fluke, there's no way for me to be sure. I would however, like to ask everyone to use caution when using this new program. I was finally able to boot into recovery mode, and run sfc /scannow which resolved the system restore issue, and let me restore back to an earlier time. I'm not sure whether this was all caused by the use of this new program or not, but before having used it my PC was operating just fine, including system restore. I'm not trying to say this is a application to stay away from, but maybe consider using the older Driver Sweeper instead.

 

Using these 3rd party driver update utilities are never a good idea IMO. You rely on the developer to constantly update their driver database (which never seems that timely). Also, companies are not consistent at all in how they provide updated divers.
Your best option is to determine what hardware you have and locate the original hardware driver website and always check there. Video and sound drivers Update more frequently. The rest can be checked less frequently.

 

@Masterblaster - the OP is not talking about a driver updater rather a driver uninstaller.

 

Just curious as to why you were uninstalling. I myself ran into issues a few days ago. Geforce Experience wouldn't open and I kept on getting "NvBackend.exe has crashed" messages. I tried installing again and that didn't work. Tried doing the "clean install" method and still nothing. Ended up having to manually uninstall and remove everything and then install the latest driver again.

 

Just in case you don't know, the actuall successor of Driver Sweeper is Driver Fusion. It's made by the same author as far as I know.

 

I use DDU since first release and never had a single problem with it, but the author (Wagnard) recommends running it while on safe mode, not doing so may cause undesired effects because of system locked files.

 

There's no reason whatsoever to use thirdp-party driver management tools.
Let the operating system handle it on its own.
Mrk