How to rollback Nvidia driver in Windows 10

Why roll back Nvidia graphics driver? If you have an Nvidia graphics card, regular driver updates are fairly common. While regular graphics driver updates are fine and even necessary to get the most out of the GPU, there can be reverse situations.

For example, the new driver may be incompatible with your particular CPU or it introduces new bugs that cause performance degradation on some or all other games and tasks, like video editing.

Not only that, some problems in the new driver can also bring unwanted crashes causing BSoD errors. To put it simply, while regular driver updates are great, it's important that you give the new update a while to complete before you install it.

However, if you have installed a new Nvidia driver update and it is causing the issue or if the new feature (s) don't go your way, you can easily restore an Nvidia driver update.

In this simple guide, I will show you the steps to rollback Nvidia driver update in Windows 10.

Steps to rollback Nvidia driver update

You can restore Nvidia driver updates from Windows Device Manager. Here's how to do it.

Step 1. First, right-click on the Start menu . This action will open the Power User menu . From this menu, select the option "Device Manager".

How to rollback Nvidia driver in Windows 10 Picture 1

Step 2. After opening Device Manager, double click on the "Display Adapters" option. This is where you will find the Nvidia driver entry.

Step 3. In the Display adapters section , double-click the Nvidia driver. Depending on the type of Nvidia graphics card you have, you may see another entry. Also, if you have multiple graphics drivers, you can see multiple entries here.

How to rollback Nvidia driver in Windows 10 Picture 2

Step 4. In the properties window, click the "Driver" tab .

Step 5. Once you are in the Driver tab , click the "Roll Back Driver" button .

Step 6. Windows may ask you to confirm. Choose one of the options, depending on your situation and click the "Yes" button . If you don't, you don't have to choose any option.

As soon as you click this button, Windows will begin restoring the previous version of the Nvidia driver. The whole process may take a few minutes, and the system may reboot itself a few times.

After the rollback is complete and the system is restarted, you should be able to use your computer as usual.

If desired, you can also configure Windows 10 to stop automatic driver updates. That way, you don't have to worry about Windows 10 automatically installing new graphics driver versions.

Stopping automatic driver updates is not a requirement, it's just a helpful tip if you don't want to automatically install new driver updates under any circumstances.

Note : If the "Roll Back Driver" button is greyed out, if you can't click it, Windows probably doesn't have an earlier version. In those cases, you must completely uninstall the driver in Safe Mode and reinstall it normally.

Lesley Montoya

Update 03 December 2020