How To Roll Back NVIDIA Drivers (And Why You Might Want To)

Most of us are familiar with this scenario: GeForce displays a pop-up window, new NVIDIA drivers are ready for installationand then restart your computer. Often this is all that happens and you go about your day without even thinking about it. But sometimes things go wrong. It’s not uncommon for a driver to cause problems, but you need to know why and when to roll them back. manually reboot the GPU to see if it helps first before rolling them back.

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First, the most common problem: if you are experiencing severe graphics lag, freezing, and other graphics errors, rolling back your drivers to a previous version may help. There could also be a case where a driver update seems normal, but it could cause damage to your graphics card that you are not aware of. This is not uncommon, and often tech publications will report any widespread driver issues so you know to roll back the update to keep your installation healthy. Finally, sometimes computers and their components simply fail.

There may not be a specific cause for your graphics card’s problems, but rolling back your drivers to an older version (as well as checking for updates to other components) may help resolve problems for which you haven’t been able to find a specific cause. Rolling back NVIDIA drivers may seem difficult if you haven’t done it before, but the process is simple whether you’re using Windows 10 or 11.

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You can usually roll back NVIDIA drivers on Windows 10 and 11 using Device Manager. There are two ways to find the Device Manager menu: either open the Start menu and search for Device Manager, or go to Control Panel and select the Device Manager option from the list.

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1. A new window will open. Go to the “Video Adapters” option.
2. Find your graphics card (starting with NVIDIA), right-click and select Properties.
3. Click on the “Driver” tab.
4. The Roll Back Driver option will be the third button from the top.

Once you click the Roll Back Driver button, the drivers will be reverted to the previous version and everything will be fine. However, sometimes the Roll Back Driver button is greyed out, so you cannot roll back drivers using this method. There is an alternative way to roll back NVIDIA drivers – it takes a few extra steps, but this way you can return your GPU to the correct working state.

If you are unable to rollback drives using Device Manager, you need to go to NVIDIA Drivers Website and download the correct driver version. First, you need to know what GPU is installed on your computer. This information is located in the Device Manager menu, so if you haven’t written it down, you can repeat the steps in the section above and copy the model name. From there:

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1. Open NVIDIA Drivers Website
2. Select your product category, series, GPU model, and operating system.
3. Click the Find button.

NVIDIA will then provide you with results that will always start with the latest drivers. Since you need an older version of the driver, click the “View additional versions” drop-down and you will see various older versions of the drivers. Select the version you need and you can download it on the next page. However, before installing these older drivers, you must first remove the latest set.

1. Either go to the Settings app and go to the Applications menu, or go to Control Panel and select Programs and Features.
2. Scroll down until you find the installed NVIDIA driver. It is usually called NVIDIA Graphics Driver and has a version number.
3. Click on the driver, then select Uninstall/Change. The Driver Wizard window will open.
4. Select “Uninstall” and restart your computer when finished.
5. Go to where you saved your old drivers, open the application and install them.

If the drivers you selected do not solve the problem, you can continue trying to rollback until you find a version that works correctly with your computer. You can also check that all Windows drivers are up to date and do not cause problems.