Explorer crashes on desktop right click after NV driver update

Since the old 182.06 driver I've been using on my Vista x64 Home Premium system didn't offer the "negative" saturation (digital vibrance) controls I needed to tone down the colors a bit on my new wide gamut monitor, I just tried updating them after being told that the option exists on never driver versions (and indeed it does, and I'm liking the effect very much).

I first tried updating through Windows update (which gave me a 191.something driver), but while it seemed to work fine, Windows Explorer (ie. the whole shell) would crash and restart every time I right clicked the desktop.
I uninstalled the driver (and unlike what I've seen on older Windows versions, after rebooting, Vista then promptly restored the old 182.06 driver my computer had shipped with - and which still didn't cause any crashing), downloaded 195.62 from the Nvidia site and ran the installer. The driver is now properly updated - and the digital vibrance controls working as they should - but I still can't right click the desktop without Explorer crashing and restarting.

I've been googling the issue a bit, and it seems like the problem is caused by "a bad context menu handler" (Right-click is slow or weird behavior caused by context menu handlers). I hate not having a working desktop right click menu - but I would also hate reverting to 182.06 and lose the saturation control - so I've just taken the chance and deleted the entry below from the registration database to get rid of the Nvidia shortcut there (the Nvidia panel is still accessible through the Windows control panel of course).

HKCR\Directory\Background\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\NvCplD esktopContext

It seems to be working - the Nvidia shortcut in the desktop right click menu is gone, but it still irks me knowing that I'm now using a driver that didn't want to play nice with my OS even on such a seemingly simple matter.
Has anyone else come across this problem with a display driver?
The various articles I found on the subject didn't mention this specific example, but rather problems with various other 3rd party context menu items - in some cases apparently effecting almost all right click menus rather than just the desktop menu as in my case.
Is it something I should be concerned about - on an ~8 months old system that has otherwise been arguably the most stable and problem free one I've ever owned - or should I just leave that registry key deleted (I saved it to a file first) and forget all about it?

What I'd recommend is reinstalling the driver, and leave the registry key out. NVIDIA Driver will create a new entry to replace the corrupt/missing key.

I just found it a bit worrying that the same problem happened with two different driver versions.
Anyway, I'm always hesitant to take risks with new drivers as I hate to invite potential problems (which is why I rarely update particularly graphics card drivers unless I need to or there's a very good reason for doing so, as in this case), and since my system otherwise still seems to be stable on both the desktop and in games, I think I'll just leave 195.62 as it is for now, with that registry key deleted.