Discontinued (check OP link for future drivers) - Clean Version

Updated with 398.46 Hotfix driver. Only one version for both Notebook / Desktop for Win 10 x64.

 

Thanks, great work

 

Hotfix is broken. After installation the device does not start. Windows says the signature is invalid and the driver does not load.

 

Agreed, I made my own clean version and it doesn't install right, either the hotfix is bugged or they added another protection to prevent clean installs.

 

The official version doesn't work either.

 

https://winaero.com/blog/disable-driver-signature-enforcement-permanently-in-windows-10/

Disable driver checks permanently and it will solve the problem. Nvidia never digitally signed the driver.

 

Can't do this if you play games that rely on EAC or BE.

 

or y'know, nvidia can sign the hotfix like they do with all their previous drivers, disabling enforcement permanently is a bad idea anyways but yes it can be done temporarily by holding shift on restart folks.

 

Aside from a few megabytes of diskspace saved, is there any advantage of using this, over just not installing GFE, and then disabling the telemetry service?

 

Hotfix isn't broken, it works and mine installed just fine. Use DDU prior, disable internet through the whole process as stated by @Wagnard and disable driver signature enforcement prior as well.

Default driver installs a lot of unnecessary, and for many - unrelated services which run in the background. Even if you "untick" all the boxes during installation, it still installs 80% of unrelated stuff. Besides those you already mentioned, stuff like:
3D Vision - 3d related stuff
Nview - for workspace management, unnecessary unless you have multi-monitor professional workspace use cases.
Nvidia Optimus - laptop battery saver related stuff.
GFE related stuff
Shield related services
Shield controller related services e.t.c.

I don't have the whole morning to list all of them, google each folder if you wish, there is plenty of information about what each individual component does. Fine tune it to your liking, there is a guide on the first post in this topic or just use default driver.

 

this clean version is bad for gfe, install the full version of driver

 

Not it's not, if you read further you would see that we have figured it out. Read the first post, it has a paragraph dedicated to GFE and how it can be installed on top of a Clean Version.

 

I was surprised by this so I checked. Looking at my system with default drivers, telemetry service disabled, and GFE unticked during installation, there is only the nvidia display container LS service running in the background, using a total of 24MB of pagefile and ~500KB of RAM, and less than 0.00002% CPU and it is already (by default, I didn't touch it) set to a low CPU priority so it should not interfere with anything performance related even if it were creating some kind of load. This service is required for proper driver function and no other nvidia software is running in the background.

I haven't seen any tests that show any performance decrease as a result of having all the bloat installed... I mean, bloat sucks, but we don't seem to actually gain anything other than disk space by removing it.... Maybe you'd rather save yourself some time for more productive things that you will enjoy rather than stripping down drivers

 

Excuse me, but is someone forcing you to use this? Besides, I can't recall asking you what I should do with my free time either. Don't like, don't use. It's that simple.

If you find trash useful, please by all means - keep it.

 

Nobody is forcing anyone to use this, I just thought that there might be a reason to use this since there was so much attention and effort being given to it.
No need to get mad at me, calm your farm son.

 

from what i have gleamed on reddit

the hotfix is signed properly, with a valid current certificate.
having secure boot enabled turns on the blocking of non whql drivers in anniversary update and later when the the certificate is newer than july 29th 2015, which 398.46's is.

I recall 398.18 had some mentions of not starting as well.

 

Who says I'm mad, and where exactly "so much attention and effort" was spent? The whole cleaning process takes 2 minutes, zipping 1 minute and uploading even less.

 

I'll take that space on my little 250GB SSD! Nvidia's bloat has gotten way beyond out of hand when one driver install takes nearly as much space as an ENTIRE Linux install INCLUDING the Linux version of the same driver and every other driver, software etc. in the whole OS. I will bet you money that 4/5 of it is just old, unused code they just keep piling on top of.

I remember when Logitech cleaned up Setpoint Mouse driver/software once and it went from ~76 to ~12 megabytes with absolutely no noticeable difference in features or UI elements missing. It was 64 MB of useless spaghetti code. Nvidia needs to do the same thing and fork half the extra nonsense (Nview, virtual audio, Ge'farce' Experience, 3d this and 3d that garbage) into separate downloads for the rare folks who use it. Most of us just want drivers, not a second operating system.

 

LOL no you seem fine XD

Yeh but marketing is a thing