Predator 17 Laptop Nvidia driver and Ansel question.

Been wondering about some of these things for awhile...

With my laptop (Acer Predator 17 GTX 1070 model) Whenever I update or install the GeForce Experience/New video drivers it does a full uninstall and install. Including requiring restarts. I have a custom build desktop that has similar specs but does not require or do the full uninstall and restarts like the Predator does... I also have several friends whom find the process mine goes through rather odd... On occasion this process also seems to cause the Nvidia drivers to fail the automatic 'express' install, requiring me to do either the custom install or a manual install. Any thoughts?

Secondly, with the release of FF XV on pc I decided to finally try out Nvidia's new Ansel screen capture tech... But I can't seem to get it to activate. I have read that Alt+ F2 is the activiation key, and tried that along with the Fn+Alt+F2 (since it is a laptop) to no avail... I can bring up the Nvidia overlay with Alt+Z or steam with Shift+F1. Any advice there?

Thanks,
Stullz

Accepted answers

All comments

Sharanji

stullz

Uninstalling will help you not to get annoying error messages.

What to do depends on the driver's version:

If you have outdated drivers, then uninstall them, shut down the computer, then restart and install the latest Drivers available.

Typically, the answer is "No."

When you get new drivers for just about anything, regardless of where you get them from, be it from Windows Update or as a direct download from the manufacturer, the installation program for the driver should replace the driver that's in place. In other words, it should simply upgrade the driver that's already there without causing any kind of problem.

The worst case is that there's a good chance that you'll need to reboot your machine as part of that upgrade process. Drivers, and in particular video drivers, often interact with a system at a relatively low level. When upgrading, you're asking the system to change something while it's currently being used.

Check to see if the game you are playing is included in our list of Ansel supported games.
Once you’re in the game, press Alt+F2 to open Ansel. Once pressed, the game should automatically pause and the Ansel overlay should appear.

Hit 'Like' if you find the answer helpful!

Click on 'Yes' if the comment answers your question!

stullz

Thanks for the response, but it doesn't really answer why the Predator behaves differently than any other machine I have had.

What you described follows what I know and am used to seeing and doing, but the Predator does something different. It seems to do a full uninstall of the previous driver to do a clean install of the new one (using the same auto update settings I've used on other machines), with a restart after uninstalling and downloading the new. Then it installs the new driver after the restart (occasionally failing, it wont give an error code or reason for) And when it is successful it usually like to do a second restart. This process is just different from every other experience I've had with Nvidia, and I really just want to understand why, is it because of Acer's specific hardware, some proprietary behavior or settings I've not found etc...

Sharanji said:

stullz

Uninstalling will help you not to get annoying error messages.
What to do depends on the driver's version:

If you have outdated drivers, then uninstall them, shut down the computer, then restart and install the latest Drivers available.

Typically, the answer is "No."
When you get new drivers for just about anything, regardless of where you get them from, be it from Windows Update or as a direct download from the manufacturer, the installation program for the driver should replace the driver that's in place. In other words, it should simply upgrade the driver that's already there without causing any kind of problem.

The worst case is that there's a good chance that you'll need to reboot your machine as part of that upgrade process. Drivers, and in particular video drivers, often interact with a system at a relatively low level. When upgrading, you're asking the system to change something while it's currently being used.

As for Ansel, it is in the list of supported games, but using the Alt+F2 does nothing... I do remember something about Acer's Predatorsense software disabling keys that are not used in games and wonder if that might be it, but haven't found the fix yet. Or maybe my driver and the geforce exp. are fubar'd and I need to do a clean install of them...

Sharanji said:
Check to see if the game you are playing is included in our list of Ansel supported games.
Once you’re in the game, press Alt+F2 to open Ansel. Once pressed, the game should automatically pause and the Ansel overlay should appear.

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