Win7 autoinstalling video drivers

[LadyCrimson]

You know how in the old days you'd try to completely uninstall a video driver so you could revert back to an older (but not the oldest) driver....because you thought the newer one was worse?

 

When I uninstall vid. driver in Win7 and then reboot, it automatically finds the driver in Win7's default driver storage and installs it without my sayso. No 'do you want to' type option. This isn't currently a problem since I only have two driver options (nvidia 258.96, which is what came w/Win7 anyway) and the current new one (260.99). But later on I might want to uninstall, for theoretical example, version 270 and install version 265....without being forced to install version 258.96 first.

 

I've searched a little and can't seem to find a way to prevent Win7/Vista from doing this. You can prevent Windows Update from auto-installing stuff, but that's not what I'm doing (you can unplug from the internet & it still autoinstalls). So, is there way to disable auto-driver install upon reboot w/out mucking with registry/default files, or the flip side, are such 'clean' driver installs no longer necessary w/these O/S?

 

P.S. Here's one of the several threads on the topic I've found, if you're interested.

Edited October 28, 2010 by LadyCrimson

[Gorth]

If I remember correctly, Windows 7 has it all stored in a driver cache now.

 

Stuff on driver repository

 

I don't know if it would work starting to delete Windows system files before reboot. Not sure I would do it myself without doing something as un-brave as backing up everything important first >_

 

People with better Windows 7 skills may have better suggestions.

[Fionavar]

Gorth is right - that is HOW it should work in W7 ... thought, truth be told, I have had much less reason with this most recent OS to have to worry!