Blue screen after a driver update, how do I roll back?
Boot into Safe Mode from the recovery screen: hold Shift while choosing Restart, then Troubleshoot, Advanced options, Startup Settings, Restart, and press 4. In Safe Mode open Device Manager, right click the display adapter, choose Properties, Driver, Roll Back Driver. If that is greyed out, uninstall the device, then install the previous version from the maker's support page.
Cite
Geek With Laptop Forum, "Blue screen after a driver update, how do I roll back?", https://geekwithlaptop.com/forum/thread/blue-screen-after-a-driver-update-how-do-i-roll-back/, accessed 2026-11-10.I fix this kind of thing for other people all day, and now I am stuck on my own laptop. Yesterday the maker's update utility offered a new graphics driver and I let it install. Since the restart, the machine blue screens every ten or fifteen minutes. It shows a frowning face and a stop code, collects data, restarts, and then I get about ten minutes on the desktop before it happens again. Twice it has gone into Automatic Repair, and both times that finished without fixing anything.
It is a Windows 11 laptop that was perfectly stable before the update. I do not want to wipe it. I know the textbook answer is "roll back the driver", but I would like to hear the order people would do things in when the machine will not stay up long enough to click through menus. Do I go through Safe Mode first, use a restore point, or uninstall the update from Windows Update? And is there any reason not to just let Windows pick a driver on its own afterwards?
- Accepted answerMarcus HaleStaffEditor, Geek With Laptop ·
Boot into Safe Mode from the recovery screen: hold Shift while choosing Restart, then Troubleshoot, Advanced options, Startup Settings, Restart, and press 4. In Safe Mode open Device Manager, right click the display adapter, choose Properties, Driver, Roll Back Driver. If that is greyed out, uninstall the device, then install the previous version from the maker's support page.
A few details. In Windows 10 the recovery path is almost the same. If the crash started right after a Windows Update and not the maker's utility, Settings, Windows Update, Update history, Uninstall updates is the other door.
Tyler, please do not run Driver Verifier on this machine. Microsoft's own documentation says that running it could cause the computer to crash and that it should only be used on test computers. It also forces extra bugchecks, which is the last thing Raul needs. The page is aimed at driver developers, and so is Microsoft's bug check code reference, which points ordinary customers to the support article on resolving blue screen errors instead.
Beth is right that a restore point is a sensible fallback, but it only helps if Windows created one before the update. It is not a replacement for the rollback.
Raul, afterwards let Windows Update offer the driver for a week or two before you install the maker's newer one. Pause driver updates in the maker's utility until then. Write down the stop code from the next blue screen if it returns, because that, with the driver name, is what a support agent will ask for.
5 more replies
Most helpful first- Owen P.Member ·
Raul, start with Device Manager while you have your ten minutes. Right click the display adapter, Properties, Driver tab, and look at the Roll Back Driver button. If it is greyed out, Windows has no previous version stored, which happens when the maker's installer removed the old one.
In that case go to the support page for your exact model, find the previous graphics driver version in the download list, and keep that installer on a USB stick so you can run it from Safe Mode.
- Beth A.Member ·
This happened to my daughter's laptop in the spring and what fixed it was System Restore, which I did not even know existed until her friend showed me. It put things back to the morning before the update and all her files were still there.
Raul, I do not know if that is the right thing for you, but if the other ideas fail it might be worth a try. Is it still on if you search for "Create a restore point" in the Start menu?
- DmitriMember ·
For what it is worth, the Windows boot menu is the same place I would go for everything else too. Once you are in Safe Mode you also get a chance to copy anything you care about to an external drive, which is a good idea before you start poking at drivers on a machine that keeps falling over.
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