What happens if you roll back the card drivers? Restoring an old working driver: rollback to a previous version

Driver rollback and driver recovery

The best practice when it comes to hardware drivers is to always keep them up to date. Typically, newer driver versions bring with them better compatibility, greater stability, and sometimes new features. Why don't you want to update? Because several times after updating you may see one of these:

Well, sometimes new drivers released (especially BETA versions of drivers) can actually cause problems including blue screens, failures and equipment malfunctions. If you find yourself in a situation where you recently updated your driver and have had problems since then , don't panic, this problem can be fixed. Below I have listed two methods to return to previous version drivers. The first method uses the dispatcher utility Windows devices, and the second method uses Driver Reviver, our award-winning driver update tool.

Rolling back a driver using Windows Device Manager

Windows Device Manager is a list of all the hardware components on your computer. You can find the device you are looking for in this list to return to more old version the driver installed for it.


To access Device Manager, you need to first open Control Panel (you can access it through the Start menu) and then open Device Manager. Once you have opened Device Manager, you need to follow these steps to rollback the driver to the previous version:

• Find the device you think is having problems, usually blue bugs screens are caused by the display adapter

• Right click the device name

• Select Properties. A dialog box for this device will open.
• Open the "driver" tab.

• Click the "Roll Back Driver" button.
• This will open a driver rollback warning message. You can always install new version, so click "Yes"

• Follow the instructions. A system reboot may be required. If the problem persists, you can follow the same steps and click the "Update driver.." button.

Rolling back a driver using Driver Reviver

If you use Driver Reviver to update your drivers, the process of downgrading to an older driver version is even easier. Driver Reviver has a feature backup, which allows you to restore previous driver in just a few simple steps. Here's how:

• Open Driver Reviver

• Go to the "Backup" tab.

• Click "Start Recovery"

• Here you will see a list of previously created restore points. Select the one where you updated the driver that is causing problems.

• You will now see a list of drivers included in this backup copy. Select only the driver you want to cancel. You don't need to roll them back. Click "Restore"

• You may receive the following message about unsigned driver. Select "Install this driver anyway"

• And it's up to you!

• If you want to prevent this driver from showing up in future scan results, you can run the scan from using Driver Reviver after driver recovery. You will see that this driver is out of date (because we restored the old version and we are always looking for new versions when we scan). Right-click on the driver and select "Exclude this driver from future scans." Now you won't see this update and you can update all your other drivers without updating this one.

I hope this helped you with whatever problem you are facing. If not, leave me a comment below and I will do my best to help you.

There are cases when, after updating drivers for a video card, a laptop or computer does not behave normally (the error “The video driver has stopped responding...” appears or crashes). computer games). In this case, you can restore operating system. However, if system recovery cannot be performed because this feature is disabled, what should you do? Can roll back the driver for the video card, thereby returning the computer to working condition. Let's do this.

There are times when, after updating drivers for a video card, laptop or computer, they do not behave normally (the error “The video driver has stopped responding...” appears or computer games crash). In this case it is possible. However, if system recovery cannot be performed because this feature is disabled, what should you do? Can roll back the driver for the video card, thereby returning the computer to working condition. Let's do this.

This method is universal, since it can be used for any device installed on the computer. We will focus specifically on such a device as a video card.

Let me give you an example: you were playing on a laptop and had no problems, but then a friend comes and advises you to update the drivers for your video card from the manufacturer’s website, justifying this by the fact that the computer will work even better. Indeed, you need to update drivers to the latest versions. You decided to install the driver, and it ended up worse than before. Despite all this, system recovery does not work for you, since it is turned off.

To fix this, you can go to the website of the manufacturer of this video card, download the old version driver and install it over the latest buggy driver. However, such an installation may well end in error.

The easiest way to get out of the above situation is roll back video card drivers. So, let's look at how to do this.

Open the device manager

Go to Video adapters and right-click on your video card and select its properties

As you can see below, the driver version of my video card is 9.18.13.3165

Now I install new drivers for the video card, the version of which is 9.18.13.3165 and after that the computer starts to become “stupid”.

You need to roll back the drivers to the previous version so that the system works the way it did before installing the new drivers. To do this, select the Driver tab and just below we find the Roll Back button.

Software developers for specific equipment are constantly improving it so that the component parts can work as efficiently as possible, as a result of which either update packages or completely new products appear that should replace the old ones. However, such an effect may not always be achieved, as a result of which it leads to the opposite result and applications may crash on the computer, unplanned reboots occur, etc. Let's figure it out how to roll back the driver for a video card to a version in which the equipment worked stably and without failures.

In a situation with graphics adapter, if the version of the new special software is unstable in operation and there are certain bugs in it, then in this case games will constantly crash, an error will be displayed on the screen that the video driver has stopped responding, the screen resolution will be reset and other troubles. That is why actions aimed at returning the previous version of the driver are relevant.

Remember that to correct the current situation it is not at all necessary to use the system restore function, although this step can indeed solve this problem. All you need to do is re-install older versions and everything will be restored. In this case, it is absolutely not necessary to search and download earlier packages from installation files on official and other resources, this issue can be resolved directly using the built-in tools of the operating system.

Procedure for rolling back a video card driver to a previous version

So, to return to using the old version of the video driver, you need to:

At this point, the driver rollback process is considered completed, after which the system should work stably and without failures.

It is worth noting that for other devices everything is done by analogy, if necessary. To do this, you just need to find the required component part in the list presented in the Device Manager window and repeat the above steps.

It is also worth remembering that the video card is physical device, which can break and software will not be a reason here bad work computer. This problem cannot be solved at home and the user will have to disconnect this component and contact service center so that they repair it or purchase a new graphics adapter.