Here is a simple but effective tool which helps you to remove parts of drivers that are left after uninstalling your systems old drivers: Driver Cleaner Pro. The Driver Cleaner Pro program will help you remove your old device drivers and their CABs for your favorite video cards and other devices: ATI, nVidia, Creative, Realtek, SIS, 3Dfx, S3 and more.

Before you install your newly downloaded drivers I recomend that you uninstall the old drivers from the control panel, and then reboot. After your system completes it's rebooting, run the program Driver Cleaner Pro. If you really want a good description of what steps should be taken, I recomend that you also read the readme file included with the installation as it contains a detailed step by step description. For those who would like to see before installing I will also provide these later on. Also keep in mind that Driver Cleaner Pro fully supports most windows themes and other kind of system themes so there should be no problems.

Where do I get it? Driver Cleaner Pro is Freeware and available at drivercleaner.net or guru3d.net, I'm sure you can just do a search on your favorite search engine and find it very easily.

Usage for Windows 2000 and Higher:

ATI:
1. Unplug nic card or modem from net or disconnect
2. Remove ATI driver from add/remove programs then remove the control panel from add/remove programs
3. Reboot into safe mode (F8 during boot up)
4. On reboot into safe mode WinXP SP1/SP2 will auto detect and install drivers. Just let it do its thing. If you can cancel out of the auto install hardware wizard then skip the rest and run Driver Cleaner! If you can NOT cancel out of auto detect wizard then...
5. Navigate to device manager - display adapter - uninstall and/or remove ATI display adapter but do not reboot
6. Disable any AntiVirus Software (If you don't disable is than it could give trouble)
7. Run Cab Cleaner (not needed, but recommended)
8. Run Driver Cleaner
9. Empty recycle bin and reboot
10. Install the new drivers and control panel

nVidia:
1. Unplug nic card or modem from net or disconnect
2. Remove nvidia from add/remove programs
3. Reboot into safe mode (F8 during boot up)
4. On reboot into safe mode WinXP SP1/SP2 will auto detect and install drivers. Just let it do its thing. If you can cancel out of the auto install hardware wizard then skip the rest and run Driver Cleaner! If you can NOT cancel out of auto detect wizard then...
5. Navigate to device manager- display adapters - highlight nVidia and click uninstall or remove but don't reboot
6. Disable any AntiVirus Software (If you don't disable is than it could give trouble)
7. Run Cab Cleaner (not needed, but recommended)
8. Run Driver Cleaner
9. Empty recycle bin and reboot
10. Install the new drivers

Other:
1. Unplug nic card or modem from net or disconnect
2. Remove driver from add/remove programs
3. Reboot into safe mode (F8 during boot up)
4. On reboot into safe mode WinXP SP1/SP2 will auto detect and install drivers. Just let it do its thing. If you can cancel out of the auto install hardware wizard then skip the rest and run Driver Cleaner! If you can NOT cancel out of auto detect wizard then...
5. Navigate to device manager- select the category - uninstall and/or remove but do not reboot
6. Disable any AntiVirus Software (If you don't disable is than it could give trouble)
7. Run Driver Cleaner
8. Empty recycle bin and reboot
9. Install the new driver

Once you have completed this there shouldn't be any problems installing your new drivers. As you can see it's very easy and takes little time to make sure your system stays clean and free of garbage.