things can get left behind while skipping steps how it happens no clue ask nvidia and the guy who makes driver sweeper=/

donta, you may add a reference to my sticky'ed thread: Driver Sweeper users: A temporary fix for things left behind

Good guide!

Yup will do man does that still have issues with it sometimes not working correctly man?

Oh you mean the bug in DS's filter management? Well, that bug is still there but my filter works just fine. I consolidated it into a single DS filter so all you have to do is check an additional box before you say "Analyse". It works as directed ;)

Added man.

Good OP. 

Reworking cables, fans and cleaning your system does wonders.  Don't forget some common sense.  If you have six fans all trying to suck air out of your system they may be working against you.  It's all about air flow and changing warm air with cool air.  Make sure you exhaust CFM is a little higher then your supply CFM you will get the extra air you need from the vents.   Pulling cool air in the front and exhausting it out the back/top is also good.  Try not to blow air over hot components then over more components to cool them. Think about it and plan it out when installing fans and cables and you can really cool things off.

donta1979  Thank You very useful info.

The bake your video card links were news to me. I tried it on a 8800GTX that I thought was junk, a goner. I dug it out out of the closet and baked that puppy. It's now a working Video card again.

I want to point out a couple things that were missed in this guide. They might not be specific to every driver update but depending on what applications you have installed (photoshop, 3D, or others) will sometimes crash if you do not allow your OS to redetect your monitor after a driver update. You need to uninstall your monitor drivers from device manager and allow windows to re-detect them during your next boot. It is also a good idea to recheck and apply settings in Nvidia Contorl Panel as recommended in the driver release notes. 

rhussain

I want to point out a couple things that were missed in this guide. They might not be specific to every driver update but depending on what applications you have installed (photoshop, 3D, or others) will sometimes crash if you do not allow your OS to redetect your monitor after a driver update. You need to uninstall your monitor drivers from device manager and allow windows to re-detect them during your next boot. It is also a good idea to recheck and apply settings in Nvidia Contorl Panel as recommended in the driver release notes. 

That may hold true for the quadros and how they work, but as for most on here using gaming bios flashed cards its an un-needed step.

Followed this guide to the letter, even unplugged my computer from the net but I encounter one single problem. Every time I restart my computer (into safe-mode or normal) it decides to automatically install drivers for both of my GTX 285's. I've already gone to Computer > Properties > Advanced > Driver Installation and turned off auto-installing so not sure how it keeps happening. The drivers it keeps giving me are called (Microsoft Corporation WDDM 1.1) Eventually I got tired of uninstalling and restarting and just installed the 286.96 drivers over them.

Also on that note, should I go back to the 197.xx drivers? These 286.xx are causing me to run a bit hotter than before. I now idle at about 47-53c and on load I get between 64-73c when before I idled at 42-46c and on load I was 54-65c. The temperature spike isn't life threatening but the cooler the better, right?