How to roll back Windows drivers

A guy came
into Dave’s Computers in New Jersey the other day having problems with his
graphics card. He was experiencing artifacts and tearing on a game and the
company who designed the game recommended rolling back his graphics driver. He
didn’t know how, so came to us for help. That’s why today’s post is a tutorial
on how to roll back Windows drivers.

Drivers are
specific instruction sets for particular hardware. Without drivers, an
operating system may not know how to fully utilize the hardware or may not
recognize it at all. As Windows is installed on tens of millions of computers,
it is impossible to be able to tell it how to work with every piece of
hardware. Instead, manufacturers provide drivers that know what the hardware is
and what it can do. Windows communicates with the driver and the driver
controls everything from there.

If a new
game, application, Windows update or something else is released is incompatible
with some aspect of a driver, you are sometimes recommended to roll it back.

Roll back your driver

You have
two options when rolling back Windows drivers. You can use the new ‘roll back’
option in Windows 10 or completely uninstall the driver and manually install an
older one. I suggest trying the roll back option first and then manually do it
if that doesn’t work.

1. Right click the Windows Start button
   and select Device Manager.
2. Select the device you’re rolling
   back.
3. Right click on it and select
   Properties.
4. Select the Driver tab and then Roll
   Back driver.
5. Select ‘Previous version of the driver
   performed better’ and select Yes.

Windows
will now uninstall the current driver and automatically install the previous
version if it can. This may take a few minutes but should work on most, if not
all, devices including graphics card drivers.

If that
doesn’t work, let’s do it manually.

1. Right click the Windows Start button
   and select Device Manager.
2. Select the device you’re rolling
   back.
3. Right click on it and select
   Properties.
4. Note the driver version in the
   window.
5. Download an earlier driver version
   to that above.
6. Select Uninstall Device and allow
   the process to complete.
7. Reboot if required.
8. Install the driver you downloaded in
   Step 5.

You won’t
always have to reboot. Much depends on the hardware in question as Windows can
dynamically restart some hardware but not others.

That’s how
to roll back a Windows driver to a previous version. It is now a simple matter
of letting Windows do the work for you and if that doesn’t work, doing it
yourself. It’s a straightforward process that anyone can do.

If you’re
having issues with drivers or anything to do with computers, the guys at Dave’s
Computers in New Jersey can help!