Terribly long winded question about clean/slimmed driver install (apologies in advance)

Discussion in 'Videocards - NVIDIA GeForce Drivers Section' started by Broseybrose, Aug 16, 2019.

  1. Broseybrose

    Broseybrose Master Guru

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    Preface

    First I just want to express my appreciation and admiration for all the hard work this community has put in over the years figuring things out and sharing that wealth of knowledge with the rest of us. I also sincerely apologize for the long-windedness of my post but I wanted to be as detailed as possible.

    I run an EVGA GTX1060 6GB SC in my aged Core i5 / Win 7 64 machine @ 1080p and I'm mostly very happy with the performance I get. 2012MHz core clock out of the box with GPU boost alone - though I do run Precision XOC when gaming for the fan profiles and raised voltage/power target.

    The Question

    So, I safe boot, run DDU, and use uKER's amazing slimming utility to install just the core as that's all I need. I've also tried the manual ini modding method described by Cyberdine and got basically the same results.

    After a clean/slim driver install (all while remaining entirely disconnected from the net) if I check device manager>GPU>properties>driver details there are almost 80 files listed. I tried to screenshot them all but that driver details window is so damn small you can't capture the whole file path/name for a screenshot anyway so I'll just describe what's there.

    3 files from C:\Program Files (x86)\Nvidia Corporation
    11 files from C:\Program Files\Nvidia Corporation
    3 files from C:\Windows\System32\DRIVERS
    4 files from C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository
    30 files from C:\Windows\System32
    25 files from C:\Windows\SysWow64 (basically duplicates of the Sys32 files)

    All this is to say that I get the feeling there may leftover junk (the FileRepository files?) that windows is associating with my GPU despite my efforts to get a true clean install. I hate seeing that telemetry file from the repository (see Drivers3 screenshot) after what's supposed to be a clean install, but I'm not educated enough to know whether or not it's right for it to be there.

    So I finally ask, does what I'm describing sound normal? Or does it sound like I need to delete some leftover crap if I'm actually to get a clean install?

    Post

    I should reiterate that I don't believe I have any performance issues, but I would like my installation to be as optimized as possible. I tried to explain things as best I could and If I need to provide more info I'll be happy to do so. Thanks for taking the time to read and respond, and double-thanks for this community in general. It's an invaluable resource. I would have never learned about Rivatuner in 2007 or Reshade in 2019 if it weren't for the efforts of you fine folk!

    Some shots
    Properties - https://imgur.com/tzI8Y2F
    Drivers1 - https://imgur.com/N2ttka2
    Drivers2 - https://imgur.com/QZRlotP
    Drivers3 - https://imgur.com/aqdUB3z
    Drivers4 - https://imgur.com/e3jEnbX
     
  2. mbk1969

    mbk1969 Ancient Guru

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  3. HeavyHemi

    HeavyHemi Guest

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    The first question you should ask is: what are you doing and why.
    If you do not believe the time you are spending is having any impact EXCEPT for perception, you're wasting your time. Your post description, and that you have no discernible difference before or after = waste of time.
    I'm not long winded.:p
     
  4. Broseybrose

    Broseybrose Master Guru

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    Nice, thank you for this! I tried it, got rid of a couple old files but nothing Nvidia related. Guess my install is as clean as it's gonna get. That's really all I wanted to know.

    Mind if I ask why youre so against slimmed drivers?

    That's certainly one way of looking at it. I've just been wondering about this for a while so I finally decided to ask.
     

  5. mbk1969

    mbk1969 Ancient Guru

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    Many reasons, like:
    - too lazy;
    - comparing to amount of photos stored on the disk by my wife, drivers` files are nothing;
    - you can get rid of some necessary component;
    - and sometimes you can get issues due to errors in those slimming utilities;
    - and the main one - I have no issues with drivers as they are.
     
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  6. AsiJu

    AsiJu Ancient Guru

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    The driver repository directory as far as I know contains copies of all your device drivers, past and present (since last clean install).

    I'm not sure if DDU cleans display drivers from there but even if it does, you will immediately get duplicates once you install a new driver.

    So in short just ignore it.

    Personally I don't use slimmers either but rather only select what I want and manually disable any extra I don't need, like NV Telemetry Container service and telemetry related tasks in Task Scheduler if present.
     
  7. Astyanax

    Astyanax Ancient Guru

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    DDU cleans drivers from there, as does disk cleanup if you run it as admin and they are past the default "old file" time out.

    There is also Driver store explorer aka rapr.exe
     

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