Hi guys,

I was trying to update my drivers to latest one, thats 301.42, but when I run installer, a few seconds in it shows "Nvidia Installer Failed". I tried downloading the Installer again a few times and tried Windows 7 Update certified Geforce drivers (on my pc now) to no avail. Windows Geforce drivers are pretty bad and dont have Nvidia control panel. GPU is a Gigabyte GTX 560 factory OC 1gb. I really dont want to reinstall Windows cause Ive got quite a few games and dont want to go through the hassle of installing each and every one of them. Also all the softwares I have. What do you guys think?

Assuming you have the right drivers for your OS and card try installing the drivers off the VGA card CD first as it sounds like the drivers can't identify the card.
Alternatively try driver sweeper to remove all traces of the Nvidia drivers. Reboot let windows detect the card, reboot and try installing the card.
Also if your mobo also has an onboard VGA card make sure to disable it in the BIOS, or at the very least set PEG or PCI-E as the primary GFX adaptor.
If still no dice try the auto detect thingo at
http://www.geforce.com/drivers
or try slightly older drivers from the Nvidia archive.
http://www.geforce.com/drivers/beta-legacy

the 301.42 drivers install just fine with my pair of GTX560's.......sure you downloaded the appropriate 32 or 64 bit ones?
maybe download them from somewhere else......
DriverSweeper is a good idea - it's virtually a clean install
if that doesn't work, do as aliali said, and try earlier drivers

Thanks for the reply gents.

I used DriverSweep to clean all Nvidia trace and tried to install driver from the Gigabyte disc to no avail. No matter what versions I used, this comes up after a second into running the installer.



I once suspected Lucid Virtu, but Im pretty sure Ive uninstalled that too.

Try deleting C:\Nvidia and run the extractor/installer again.

Tried that a few times, changing extractor directories, still no dice. How about DirectX? Is there anything that DirectX can stuff up?

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Like rebooting the system? Yes.

Ohh...

Is it plugged in then?

Have you tried installing one of the older versions to see if there is something wrong with that one?

And also try downloading the driver again, half the time the driver gets corrupted when I'm downloading them.

I think the driver from the Gigabyte installation disc is old enough. Its 280.26. That didnt work. As Ive said previously, Ive tried re downloading the drivers to no avail. Im going to try re-seat my GPU now.

That's a whole lot of strange, Not sure if reseating will help but worth a try.

I'm thinking this could be more related to the system if there is no trace left of the driver... unless...

This is probably the only time ill suggest this, give a registry cleaner ago, it probably the only place anything will be left over from the driver install.

If no dice try backing everything up and rolling back to a previous restore point.

I updated the GPU driver software through Device Manager and hey, its now working! I reseated the GPU before but I think that didn't help. I went into Device Manager, and under Display adapters my GPU was listed as a standard VGA driver. So I clicked Update Software Driver and Windows detected the GTX 560 and downloaded 295. something for me. I then updated it to the latest, 301.42 through Device Manager, manually pointing it to the driver extractor directory and here I am typing with latest driver installed! Previously before reseating the GPU, I went into device manager and the GTX 560 was listed as having a corrupted registry, so thats why I think the Nvidia installer was not detecting the GPU and failing. I think the registry was corrupted because when I had the 296.10 driver and was about to update to the latest, 301.42, I used Nvidia's Update Driver feature from the installer rather than removing the previous driver manually. Although the feature removed the previous driver automatically, something must've went wrong during the process or the automated uninstaller missed the registry entries. And now its gaming time! Thank you very much to those who've tried to help me with this issue. Much appreciated. Cheers!

cohmoddersolo's solution should fix most of the problem with NVIDIA installer being stubborn. However, if that still does not work out you actually have to do a complete removal of all the driver files under safemode and reinstall the them using Super User role (by PStools). This guide can walk you through the how-to's but before you have to jump all over the places, try to confirm your OS is running on the latest Service Pack. Usually that would get rid of the annoying issue before you even know it.