How to Uninstall Windows Drivers
If your
computer is acting up, hardware drivers may be to blame. Micheal King explains
how rolling back drivers can help
Installing drivers can be a hair raising adventure, even on
the latest operating systems. These finicky pieces of code act as the middleman
between your PC hardware and its OS. Although drivers install with ease, they
integrate deeply into OS, sinking their teeth into areas most other software
doesn’t go near.
Most of the time the driver installation process is simple,
seamless and transparent to you, as it should be. But when things go wrong,
they can go really wrong. A poor driver can even crash your PC.
For example, when Microsoft launched Windows Vista in 2007,
critics lambasted it for being slow and prone to crashing; Microsoft
investigated and found that a majority of computer crashes were due to driver
issues.
Should you encounter a problematic driver; a couple a tricks
can help. Microsoft has introduced an easy way to roll back to a previous,
hopefully more stable, version of the driver, or remove it from the system
altogether, giving you a clean slate to try again or install a different
version.
Roll back to
previous driver
Click Start, type Device Manager, then press Enter.
Find and double click the category of device causing the issue (for instance,
the graphics cars is listed under Display Adapters).
Double click the problematic device to bring up the
Properties window. Click the Driver tab. Click the ‘Roll Back Driver’ button.
Click Yes to confirm your choice.
Windows will automatically remove the current driver for the
device and reinstall the previous driver. You may receive a notification that
the system setting have changed, and be prompted by Windows to reboot. In this
case, restart your PC as soon as possible.
Uninstall a
driver
The best and safest mothod of uninstalling a driver
completely is to use the device’s uninstaller program if it has one. If you
used an installer to set up the device (as is the case with most graphics card
and sound card drivers, for example), you can uninstall it just as you would
any other program on your PC.
Click Start, type Uninstall Program and press Enter.
In the Uninstall window that appears, go through the list and find your device
or drivers. Double click the entry to begin the un-installation process.
Sometimes a device won’t have an uninstaller or it doesn’t
appear. You can use the Device Manager to remove such drivers. Click Start,
type Device Manager and press Enter. Find and double click the category of
device whose driver you wish to uninstall.
Right click the device and click Uninstall. Windows will
prompt you to confirm the device’s removal. Click OK to remove the driver then
reboot as soon as possible.
After you roll back or uninstall a problematic driver, you
can try downloading and installing the latest version from the manufacture’s
website, or try a specific version that previously worked to get your computer
back on its feet.
