If you run X-Plane on a Windows Operating System and you change your graphics card, you want to make sure that every trace of the drivers for the “old” card are completely removed from both your file system and the Windows registry. Before installing new drivers for the new card, just uninstalling the drivers manually using Control Panel will not sanitize your computer entirely. To make sure that your computer is “clean” before installing your new card, download a utility called DDU – Display Driver Uninstaller. It’s freeware from a company by the name of Wagnardsoft.
I tend to be very cautious about freeware windows cleanup tools, but this one is an industry standard with the apparent backing of both Nvidia and Intel.
The official Nvidia game drivers support site publishes this description of DDU:
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Display Driver Uninstaller is a driver removal utility that can help you completely uninstall AMD/NVIDIA/INTEL graphics card drivers and packages from your system, trying to remove all leftovers (including registry keys, folders and files, driver store). The AMD/NVIDIA/INTEL video drivers can normally be uninstalled from the Windows Control panel, this driver uninstaller program was designed to be used in cases where the standard driver uninstall fails, or when you need to thoroughly delete NVIDIA and ATI video card drivers. The current effect after you use this driver removal tool will be similar as if its the first time you install a new driver just like a fresh, clean install of Windows. As with any tool of this kind, we recommend creating a new system restore point before using it, so that you can revert your system at any time if you run into problems.
To download the software, click here. Choose the portable version so that it doesn’t create even more registry entries.
To uninstall the “old” Graphics Driver from your system using the Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) software, follow these instructions (produced by Intel):
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- Download the latest version of the software.
- If you download the Installer, run it, it will create a shortcut on the desktop.
- If you download the Portable/ self-extracting version, look for the executable and extract it. Remember the path.
- Reboot into Windows* safe mode. (Refer to Start your PC in safe mode in Windows.)
- Look for the shortcut on the desktop (step 1.1) or the extract path chosen (step 1.2.1) and run theDDU executable.
- Click Close in the Options window.
- Select device type to GPU and select device to the one you want to remove. If you are doing a clean-up, you can choose all GPUs.
- Click Clean and restart or Clean and Shutdown depending on your needs.
- Wait for the software to finish the process. It will automatically reboot Windows to the typical mode or shutdown the system.