Please Help! FrcWre 91.31 control panel erased all of my 3d profiles!!

First, be very cautious with the new Forceware 91.31 drivers and the control panel that is included. The new control panel contains a redesigned GUI. I had "show SLI load balancing" enabled before I did the upgrade. So afterwards I wanted to turn it off, but could not find the switch to do so.

So I switched back to "Classic" control panel, disabled the "show SLI load balancing" checkbox, applied, then went back to the new control panel GUI.

When I returned, ever single profile was gone. Erased from my hard drive. Even the ones that came with the driver! Of course, I also lost the 15 custom profiles I had made (figure 2-hours of tuning for each).

Needless to say I am still stinging from this.

My question: Is there a place I can just download the profiles I want so I don't have to start from scratch? I've googled, I've searched forums and everywhere else. I cannot find a place where I can just download profiles and save them. Shouldn't Nvidia offer this???!?!??? Maybe it makes too much sense... Or maybe I missed it on Nvidia's site?

I've found the Nhancer product which offers an online profile database. But the latest version came out in Fall 05. So that basically means it is useless to me because I don't trust something that old managing a piece of hardware which is using drivers that were released in Summer 06.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

-Smoky

 

if you want the default profiles back, just reinstall the driver.

the 91.XX series drivers are still beta after all

PS: use the old control panel, its better anyway.

 

Of course I realize I can do that. But what I really want is a place where I can download profiles. See, the driver doesn't come with profiles for more than half of my games. So I would like to find somewhere that has profiles I can download.

That way I don't have to start from scratch for each one. And maybe I can spend only a couple hours fixing nVidia's mistake instead of the full load.

Thx!

PS: After posting this on a couple forums I'm starting to wonder if such a library of profiles even exists! Seems absurd to me that after all this time someone has not offered a profile database.

Update... I bit the bullet and went ahead and reinstalled the driver, as you suggest. I figure then at least I can get some games in tonight. Guess what...no profiles. It didn't replace them. Additionally, it will not let me create my own profiles now. It tells me that I have to associate at least a global profile setting. And I have nothing in the list at all.

Here is a pic of the classic view, immediately after driver install...



So now what? lol

 

O_O that's really weird now.

get driver cleaner pro, install it and uninstall your drivers
now reboot into safe mode, start driver cleaner pro and select all the nvidia stuff. now click on start
after finished cleaning, reboot in normal mode and install the driver of your choice

ps: I don't know about any profile website... but try google http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=nvidia+game+profiles+database&btnG=Search&meta=

ps 2: always repeat the driver cleaner procedure when installing new drivers.

 

Wow..that seems drastic. I'll hold off on that process for now. I don't want to gut the registry just yet. I've never heard of driver cleaner pro. Not doubting you but I am always cautious about non-OEM driver management software.

But then again, look where that got me since I depended on nVidia. lol

And ya..Google is my start page. No noob here. If you re-check my original post you'll see I noted that I have been searching heavily for this. The only thing that ever comes up is nHancer.

If I've turned up nothing by tonite (ie a quick fix for a silly problem) then I'll do the more aggressive driver whipe as you suggest.

Thx
-Smoky

 

It's not drastic, it is the normal process for fully deinstalling drivers.

http://www.drivercleaner.net/

Before the people here install new drivers, they use driver cleaner pro.
There's also a Sticky Thread about this topic.

 

The 3D profiles are stored in two places. One place is in a file called NvApps.xml. Since it is in XML, you can actually read the information. But the information is also stored in the HKLM branch of the Windows registry. You can Google to find the exact registry location if you like. The registry values override what's in the XML file, so just editing the XML file won't work, unless you delete all the registry values first. As stated above, this is a good application of Drivercleaner Pro.

You can also run nHancer to modify profiles. Search this message board (Guru3D) and you will find info on nHancer.

 

cmd prompt
expand c:\nvidia\win2kxp\91.31\nvapps.xm_ c:\windows\system32\nvapps.xml

and just bite the frickin bullet and use nHancer its the best out there.

 

I also use Driver Cleaner Pro to clear out the reg before a new driver set. All my custom profiles are stored at the bottom of the nvapps files, so I just copied them to another text file. Now with each new driver set I just copy and paste them back into the bottom of the new nvapps file and "activate" them in the classic CP, and it's worked so far.

 

Here's an interesting discussion of the SLI, nVidia profiles, etc:

http://www.hwspirit.com/reviews.php?read=14&page=4

I'm not saying that the author is right or wrong, but it does leave me with a sense of suspicion about the whole app profile concept. BTW, has anyone got the nHancer 64 bit beta 7 version to work with Win x64? Note my system specs and I am running 91.31. I've had no luck so far on the nHancer forum, but I assume that they will eventually catch up to me.