[SOLVED] GPU messed up by unofficial installer

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Tac 25

Tac 25

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Jul 25, 2021
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Hi, please listen to a little story..

a few days ago.. at the pc shop, had my backup pc updated with an SSD and a Windows 10 installed into the SSD.

however, without my consent the technician used a GPU driver installer from his usb to re-install my GT 1030.. at first it looks like it went well, and I took home the pc.

back home, to my horror.. saw with GPU-Z that some features were lacking.. OpenCL, Vulkan, and PhysX were not there!
the problem does not end here.. now, some of my games won't run. Dead or Alive won't even start. And the final problem is, whenever I try to install an official driver taken from Nvidia's site.. the installation stops halfway and causes my pc to restart. Leaving OpenCL, Vulkan, and PhysX still not installed.

is there some way I could remove the driver that my friendly technician installed, so I could install the official drivers? I could not find what he installed in "Add or Remove Programs"

EDIT: right now, I'm downloading the latest drivers with Geforce Experience.. which hopefully can be installed and fix this problem.
EDIT 2: planning to go to the shop later, to ask him exactly what program he used to install gpu driver into my pc. Well, I should be getting angry now.. but that tech is a nice guy, and has helped me several times on other pc problems. He might have not known that his installing gpu driver would have this effect on my pc.


 
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Solution
J
I had something similar a few weeks ago, seemed the installer couldn't detect any NVidia hardware. Was a Windows feature update, won't be downloading those again.

Uninstalled the update, everything fine and stable since. Only discovered the issue when I went to install the latest drivers, at first I thought it was a corrupt download. So tried the drivers that I'd originally uninstalled, they couldn't detect any NVidia hardware either.

Was that update, might be worth going back through yours and uninstalling any non-essential update. It's possible your tech updated Windows in good faith, unaware an update had messed up the system.
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Ok so try this first as you are using w10 you will see the add/remove is now a single column list alter the sort by tab to date you might find what he did come to near or the very top of the list . If that does not work look at top right of add/remove and you will see a programs and features , click on this and you will everything installed just how it used to look in operating systems before w10. For some strange reason the single column add remove in w10 does not show everything that is installed on your pc.

Dont know what country your in but if you cant sort it go back to the shop , tell the guy unless he sorts it you will take him to the small claims court and take out a compensation summons against him. In england this will cost you a fee of 10% of the compensation you are looking for and if he refuses to pay his assets can be frozen.
 
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Unless you have finished the install by the time you read this choose manual install and tick the box for clean install , if i am too late you could always remove the nvidea software and do it again.

Did you find anything in the program features page you did not recognise.
 
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the latest drivers are still downloading, now at 85%. Ok, will do what you said. Going to choose manual and do a clean install.

EDIT:

did not work, trying to install driver through Geforce Experience receives error.

 
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the SSD is freshly installed, it does not have much programs yet besides Windows 10 and a handful of games (which worked before the weird / unknown GPU driver got installed). Does formatting the SSD again for a clean install of Windows 10 remove the old graphics drivers?

got stressed, need to play some Genshin Impact right now to regain my sanity. Switching over to gaming pc. Will continue fixing backup pc tomorrow.

thanks to everyone who helped today.
 
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Scan your system for malware and use DDU in safe mode to remove and reinstall your GPU drivers.

How To - How to perform a CLEAN install of your video card drivers.

Updated 9-19-19 How to do a CLEAN install of your graphics card drivers using the Wagnard tools Display Driver Uninstaller A major issue on many systems is the presence of multiple graphics card drivers or drivers that have been incompletely uninstalled followed by the installation of...
forums.tomshardware.com forums.tomshardware.com
 
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the SSD is freshly installed, it does not have a malware scanner yet.

@dotas1 used DDU before seeing your post, unfortunately forgot to use safe mode. When I restarted, there is only a black screen.

thinking of just reformatting the SSD.
 
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The driver version seems to be rather old. If Windows is updated to newest version (and I guess it is) there may be some incompatibility going on. As already mentioned by others, nuke the drivers with DDU in safe mode.
Other then that there is always chance that GPU decided to die, just accidentally after fresh system install.
 
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the driver used with Geforce Experience is the latest one.

the driver used on the other post is an old one.

both did not work.

I'll be trying the safe mode + DDU method tom.

if that does not work, then will probably resort to reformatting the SSD.
 
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I had something similar a few weeks ago, seemed the installer couldn't detect any NVidia hardware. Was a Windows feature update, won't be downloading those again.

Uninstalled the update, everything fine and stable since. Only discovered the issue when I went to install the latest drivers, at first I thought it was a corrupt download. So tried the drivers that I'd originally uninstalled, they couldn't detect any NVidia hardware either.

Was that update, might be worth going back through yours and uninstalling any non-essential update. It's possible your tech updated Windows in good faith, unaware an update had messed up the system.
 
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Solution
punkncat said:
Look for "reset this pc" and use it to reinstall Windows. Since you have nothing on the PC yet, that shouldn't pose a problem.
Afterward, go and install the official drivers and see if the issue resolves.
Click to expand...
I disagree with this because corruption can happen at any given moment, even during windows update. I would do a clean windows install instead just to make sure that everything is exactly as it's supposed to be and not SHOULD be in the case of reset.
 
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@John Chesterfield

thank you for that critical piece of info. Was able to approach the situation more calmly after knowing that. Similar thing probably happened to my pc.

____

THE FIX

well, now thinking I have nothing to lose... saw that Windows wanted to install three more updates. Just let Windows 10 do what it wants, since gonna reformat anyway if it fails. Three updates were succesfully installed. After that, had the feeling that Windows might be ready to accept Nvidia drivers... did a clean install of the latest driver for GT 1030 which is 497.29 dated Dec 20. It worked... !!! Vulkan, PhysX, and OpenCL are now active.

to test.. Dead or Alive VI is working fine now.

thanks guys to everyone who helped and made suggestions. :)



this potato pc can only handle the game at 800 x 450 resolution, at that size there's almost no lag and the game is playable. This is only a backup pc anyway. My other pc can play the game full screen. What's important is this old soldier is working fine again.
 
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