Is there anything better?

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Than hearing the *thunk* sound associated with a Windows error when you're halfway through updating your graphics drivers, finding nothing works and realizing you haven't created a restore point in several weeks?


FFFFFUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[bbmike]

Yes, Huw will be along in a moment to suggest Linux.  :D

[WYBaugh]

 :(

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Thankfully a few swipes of the registry cleaner and I was able to install again.  Sadly, Mordheim doesn't run with the newest AMD drivers.  At least the rollback worked without a hitch.  Time to stab some rival warbands!

[Ian C]

Is there anything better? Yes. Yes there is.

Copying three years of backed-up work, stored on over 40 CD ROM's to your desktop to burn them onto a more compact number of DVD's and thinking it's safe because the odds of your hard disk failing at this particular moment in time are unlikely. Then, destroying said CD ROM's by breaking them in half and then returning to your PC to find your hard disk has indeed failed, losing all three years of work, current work, documents, and Windows install.

[Jarhead0331]

Is there anything better? Yes. Yes there is.

Copying three years of backed-up work, stored on over 40 CD ROM's to your desktop to burn them onto a more compact number of DVD's and thinking it's safe because the odds of your hard disk failing at this particular moment in time are unlikely. Then, destroying said CD ROM's by breaking them in half and then returning to your PC to find your hard disk has indeed failed, losing all three years of work, current work, documents, and Windows install.

FUBAR.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

You win this round Ian.

[WallysWorld]

My HDD died on me four weeks ago on my 6.5 year old computer. What a depressing feeling that was. Luckily I've been using Norton Ghost for backups and had a backup that was about a month old. But it still a real pain to reinstall Windows 7 and all of the updates and then a lot of the programs and games had to be reinstalled from scratch due to the licenses which wouldn't work with a backup copy.

The only saving grace was that I bought a SSD to replace the dead drive and now my old i7-920 starts up in about 20-25 seconds compared to about 2-3 minutes with the old HDD.

[FarAway Sooner]

Yeah, I upgraded to an SSD about a year ago, and it was the single most noticeable impact to the user experience I've ever had from modifying a single piece of hardware.  Boot-up time is about 10x faster and app load times are probably 4x faster.

[sandman2575]

This is weird serendipity -- I installed new video drivers for the first time in many months last night too, and also realized midway through that I forgot to create a restore point. Installation went without a hitch, but I definitely had a moment of "s**t why didn't I create a restore point?"

PSA maybe, but if you're like me and regard updating video drivers with extreme caution and trepidation, you might want to check out this very nifty tool that I've used now for a couple of years without any problem -- a 3rd party app that's available on Nvidia's forums but also completely usable for AMD cards:

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/550192/geforce-drivers/wagnard-tools-ddu-gmp-tdr-manipulator-new-cpu-core-analyzer-updated-03-29-2016-/

The developer, Wagnard, has been working on this tool for a couple of years, and like I say, I've used it many times and every time went as smoothly as can be.

It may be overkill, but I've definitely had instances in the past when just uninstalling nvidia drivers from the Windows control panel has led to problems. This tool really does a thorough uninstall in a way that's safe and straightforward.

[WallysWorld]

I've been using the DDU for a few years now and it works great. I too don't make restore points before installing new nVidia drivers, but maybe I will start doing so.

[Huw the Poo]

Yes, Huw will be along in a moment to suggest Linux.  :D

Heh.  I'm not without sympathy for SDR (or Ian - damn!) but yes, Linux is superior in every way. ;)  However, happy as I am to extol the virtues of a better OS, I will never lie about it, and I'd be lying if I said this would never happen with Linux.  Of course it could. :)

[Ian C]

You win this round Ian.

In hindsight I wished I hadn't.

I bookmarked http://www.howtogeek.com/199068/how-to-upgrade-your-existing-hard-drive-in-under-an-hour/for future use and will be cloning my drive as a backup soon.

[Yskonyn]

Is there anything better you ask?

Yes certainly ; NVidia.