TechPowerUp Releases NVIDIA Driver Install Configuration Utility

A growing complaint we’ve seen from enthusiasts around the web over the past few years is that our graphics drivers have too much bloat. In some cases, it’s true – both AMD and NVIDIA will install features that most users won’t be taking advantage of. While those features don’t necessarily mean anything but disk space is wasted, it’s hard to ignore the pull of keeping things optimized.

Our friends at TechPowerUp have decided to solve this issue by releasing a tool called NVCleanstall. This tool lets users customize an NVIDIA driver to their heart’s content. While such solutions are not new, we would consider TPU to be an ideal source for these types of tools.

After opening NVCleanstall, the tool will automatically detect the current driver that you should be installing, at which point hitting “Next” will download it immediately. You can also choose a different available version, or use a local installer that you’ve already downloaded.

One caveat will affect almost no one, and that’s if a Quadro is installed, the gaming driver will still be suggested. Why this matters is that the Quadro driver already strips out a bunch of the GeForce-specific features, so that is generally a good choice to go with from the get-go. If you run Quadro and still want to use this tool, you can strip out nView, WMI Provider, Ansel, the USB-C driver, DLSS, and HDMI audio. With a gaming driver, a lot more tweaking ability becomes available:

After choosing your desired configuration, NVCleanstall will extract everything into a temporary folder. While it’s doing its thing, you can further choose to disable installer telemetry, default to a silent install (good for IT use), and perform a clean install by default (this will purge customization in the NVIDIA Control Panel). The entire process takes tens of seconds at worst.

After you are all done, you will have the option to install the driver in-place, which is ideal for the regular user who doesn’t plan to make the customized driver portable. You can also show the result in its folder, and then copy it out of there. The tool will automatically delete its left-behind temp files upon closing, so don’t make that mistake.

You can grab NVCleanstall from the official download page.