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I was under the impression that NVIDIA is a "native" thing and is thus important to be kept running.

But even after I've exited it, I don't realize anything wrong with my computer..

But of course I can't trust my senses here, so basically does anyone know is it OK to close NVIDIA?

Context menu of the NVIDIA Tray Icon

Acer Aspire 4937G, Windows Vista Home Premium SP2

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  • 1
    It not fine, however, to ignore the "new updates available" notification. Sep 25, 2011 at 21:21
  • @grawity I think there's something wrong with GUI. If i hit that button it will just tell me that my drivers are already the latest (updated).
    – Pacerier
    Sep 26, 2011 at 1:12

3 Answers 3

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If you were to close that program, you would only be closing the control panel. The drivers for your display adapter would still be loaded (in fact, they are loaded at boot, instead of being loaded at Windows start, like the nVidia control panel is). So, closing it would not do anything but free up a little bit of memory on your computer.

If you were to unload the drivers for the display itself, you would simply see Windows revert back to the default, stripped down VGA driver, and you'd just lose all your 3D acceleration and higher resolutions. But to do that, you would have to go under the device manager, where it will let you click "uninstall driver for this device".

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What you are exiting is the "NVIdia control panel" - while it has controls and maintenance related to your card, it is not the cards driver, and is quite safe to exit.

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  • +1 I can confirm it, I personally kill most tray icons and services and NVIDIA is solely running as a driver here. Sep 25, 2011 at 20:26
  • Yes, it just closes the control panel, your drivers will keep running. If you don't want the icon, go to nvidia control panel>desktop>show notification icon Sep 25, 2011 at 20:47
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I understand that the control panel is for settings editing only: no funcionality is lost if you close it.

In my case, the control panel kept crashing and bringing the computer to a crawl; if I closed the tray icon, and disabled and re-enabled the gpu in Device Manager, the computer would be normal again.

So it would be best if you closed the tray icon, if the NVidia control panel kept crashing.

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