A faulty or outdated graphics driver can cause a lot of problems on your computer on a daily basis. Not only will it affect the overall performance of your system, but you may also experience strange visual glitches, screen flickering, and crashes. Getting rid of outdated or faulty drivers to fix this issue, thankfully, is quite simple, as all you really need to do is reset the graphics drivers of your GPU, be it a dedicated graphics card or an integrated chip. Alternatively, you can also reinstall fresh graphics drivers to fix all the graphics issues on your Windows PC.
If you’re having graphics driver-related problems on your Windows desktop or laptop and are wondering how to fix them, then below is a step-by-step guide in which I’ve highlighted a few different ways to reset and reinstall the graphics driver on Windows.
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How to reset your graphics driver in Windows 11
By using a simple keyboard shortcut
One of the easiest ways to refresh the graphics drivers that are installed on your system is by pressing a simple keyboard shortcut. All you have to do is press the Windows key + Ctrl + Shift + B together and wait for your screen to flash (if it’s not frozen or blacked-out already). The screen flashes as the driver refreshes in the background, but it’ll quickly get back to normal, and you should be good to go. This method, in case you are wondering, is completely safe and won’t interfere with ongoing tasks or the apps that you may have running.
How to reinstall your graphics driver in Windows 11
Using the Device Manager for integrated graphics
If you have a laptop or a desktop PC with an integrated graphics chip from Intel or AMD, then here’s how you can easily reinstall its graphics driver via the Device Manager on Windows:
- Press the Start button and search for Device Manager.
- Select Device Manager to open it, and click the Display Adapters option to expand it.
- Right-click on the Intel or AMD graphics chip listing, and then select the Uninstall device.
Your screen may flicker once you do this, but it’s nothing to worry about.
- Restart your PC.
Your PC will now boot back into Windows, and automatically reinstall the latest version of the driver that you just uninstalled.
How to reinstall your graphics card’s driver in Windows 11
Using the Display Driver Unsinstaller (DDU) to remove existing drivers
Those using a dedicated graphics card from Nvidia, AMD, or Intel will have to perform some additional steps to reinstall the graphics drivers. It’s still fairly simple, though, and you shouldn’t have any issues as long as you follow the steps highlighted below.
- DownloadDisplay Driver Unsinstaller (DDU) from the official website and extract the archive.
- Click and run the DDU installer.
- The utility will suggest you reboot into Safe Mode before continuing. You can ignore this, but it’s recommended that you reboot your PC in Safe Mode.
- Launch DDU once again and ignore the options menu windows that show up to proceed with default settings.
- Select GPU and choose your graphics card from the drop-down menu on the right side.
- Click Clean and restart button, which is located on the left side.
- DDU will now run the uninstaller, and it’ll ask for your confirmation to reboot.
- Once restarted, open the web browser of your choice and head to your graphics card manufacturer’s website to download the latest version of the most applicable driver for GPU.
- Nvidia drivers
- AMD drivers
- Intel drivers
- Run the graphics driver installer and simply follow the on-screen instructions to reinstall your graphics driver.
Troubleshoot your way out of graphics issues
Resetting and reinstalling the graphics drivers, as you can tell, is fairly straightforward, and you won’t have any issues regardless of whether you have a PC with an integrated or a dedicated GPU. As simple as the process is, this is something you should be doing quite often on your PC. Just ensure that your graphics drivers are up-to-date all the time, and you should be good to go. There are a few instances in which you may have to roll back a graphics driver, but the process for that is a lot easier overall.