nvidia drivers... how much space?

[porina]

I was playing with windirstat recently when I found what looked like a lot of old nvidia driver files around. Turns out it was a known thing, so for the benefit of people like me who didn't know about it, it is worth knowing. I found this link http://www.gameplayinside.com/optimize/cleaning-up-old-nvidia-driver-files-to-save-disk-space/ and used it as a basis, although it may be out of date. Other guides were available but I didn't look into them.

 

C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\Installer2

C:\ProgramData\NVIDIA Corporation\Downloader

 

I emptied the contents of the 1st location, and in the 2nd, I found a bunch of folders with a long hex name and deleted all those, leaving the others. On my main systems, up to 18 months old, cleaning this up cleared about 6GB! Some of my systems run small SSDs so that is significant. Oh, if you manually download as opposed to use the built in update feature, you may also have the download file and the expanded version in a c:\nvidia. I don't have those but did in the past.

 

There doesn't seem to be any negative effects from what I did, but do so at your own risk or perhaps look for a better guide than I did.

[r4tch3t]

Ah windirstat I love that tool. I also recently deleted 4 gig of old ones found through windirstat

[EmoChipmonk]

I would have used a driver cleaner Then reinstalled the newest drivers.

[SageOfSpice]

Yeah, I'm not really sure why they don't delete those, or simply just keep it self-contained. Usually best to just nuke drivers though. So many issues to be caused by them, might as well just get it clear the first time. 

 

DDU doesn't even clear those out if I remember correctly. I always have to delete mine manually.

[Teddy07]

39 minutes ago, porina said:

C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\Installer2

1,19 GB more space now