Vista - Can't install Nvidia drivers

I tried to upgrade my Nvidia drivers from 178.13 to the latest version (180.48). Although I never had problems with upgrading my drivers before, this time it seems impossible! I uninstall the old ones, use driver cleaner.net on safe mode, install the new ones, but every time I get the message that there are no changes on the system and have to repeat the installation process. It also seems impossible to rollback by installing the old drivers again! The only way to return to the old settings is to use Windows update (system restore doesn’t work). I tried all possible driver packages from Nvidia but nothing works! Does anybody know how to solve this problem? Thanks a lot..

Hermes

Ok, stupid question but:

1.- How are you uninstalling the drivers

2.- Are you restarting before using the Registry cleaner?

3.- Are you installing the new ones as an Administrator (right click on file and run as admin)?

No stupid question at all!

I uninstall the drivers through control panelà software. I reboot, go on safe mode and use driver cleaner.net, clean all Nvidia debris and then reboot. I install the diver which brings up the normal setup menu, agree with the conditions, click next etc. It only takes two or three seconds, and then I get the screen that says that there are no changes on my system and have to rerun the installation procedure

Oh yes I run everything as Administrator!

Ok, are you sure you are getting the correct drivers for the correct OS and correct bit? I see that you are running Vista 32bit, are these the drivers you choose?

GeForce Release 180

I was having issues with my drivers, the culprit turned out to be my monitor but, this is how I installed my drivers from now on and I have had no problems whatsoever.

I unistall my current driver from Device Manager, I inmediately see the screen changing to regular vga drivers, it asks me to reinstall, I do so, I boot up again and now Vista installs the std vga drivers, I use CCcleaner to get rid of any instances, I reboot again for good measure.

Once I am back at the desktop, I go to the folder where I downloaded the drivers, uncompress the file directly to the same folder I saved it to, I again go to my device manager, go to my display adapters, double click on vga card and then, double click on driver tab and click on update drivers.

Once there, I tell it to let me choose the driver, click on "Have Disk", search for the folder where I uncompressed the executable and click on the .inf file, it starts doing the whole installatation process and tells me to reboot once its done.

I am sure there are other ways to do this faster but, so far, this has work for me in Vista x64... I wouldn't think it would hurt anything trying it this way.

Well, I tried to follow your advice but with out result. On device manager I got the message : file not found. When I searched in the file that was unpacked I found several files with yellow question marks. Could that be the problem? Any way thanks a lot for your time and advice!

Hhhm, wierd that you get file not found since the std vga driver should be installed for any video card device that doesn't have dedicated drivers...

Yellow Question Marks = problems (some hard some may be easy to solve)

Is there a way you can post a screen of your Device Manager so we can take a look at those yellow question marks?

Download to your Desktop first.
Install from there...
Driver Download Center | NVIDIA Drivers

Login to the administrator account and try to install them. You could use add/remove programs to remove them and restart. Then, administrator and reinstall.

My question is, how nVidia card do you have??

Sorry it took so long guys. I was busy at work but also frustrated because the driver situation didn’t improve. The worst thing happened too: I couldn’t even roll back to the older 17.13 drivers provided by Windows update. It gave me a 80070002 error, and regardless the troubleshooting provided by Internet I couldn’t fix it. I even tried Nvidia customer support and the strange thing is that they advised me to install the 17.24 driver instead of the latest one! Well the solution they provided me with was the general: Uninstall, go on safe mode, use driver sweeper, download the 17.24 driver etc.etc. Well I was ready to reformat my hard drives (a step I profoundly hate!), but somehow I visited Internet for one more time. I found the possibility of downloading (officially unsupported) Nvidia modified drivers. I downloaded the latest 18.84 beta driver, unpacked with winrar, installed it and thanks God it works!
Finally I have to notice that every official Nvidia driver from 17.13 and above shows several yellow question marks beside the unpacked files, on my system at least.
Thanks a lot for your consideration and advice.


VeGanKo, I have a Gainward GeForce GTX280

Edit: For those of you with similar problems here is the download link:

Forceware 180.84 Vista 32bit.7z

Edit: The new driver gave a Futurmark 2006 score of 12969 points!