Artifacting, Blacking Out During/After Driver Rollback

So I was using the default drivers 153.xx for some time, decided to upgrade to 174.31 from seeing most people liking it. I got the drivers off of LaptopVideo2Go, installed it, screen blacked out and resolution to adjust, then it successfully installed. I played some games, was satisfied, until someone brought up the fact that LaptopVideo2Go's drivers ran hotter than official Dell drivers with their modded INFs, so I managed to find the link to the official Dell 174.31.

First thing I did was roll back my drivers to the original official dell 153.xx one that I had before I installed the 174.31. While it was rolling back, my screen artifacted, the driver rollback window was not responding, I saw random black squares form here and there, with numerous blacking out and flashing. At the bottom right corner it says that Windows has recovered some sort of video card drivers or something, but the artifacting continued with screen blacking out randomly. Though the driver details later changed to 154.31, though occasionally when I move my mouse, the screen blacks out and artifacts.

So I was utterly shocked, but then it seemed like I could close the windows, so I did. Then I double clicked on the official dell 174.31 installation file and no artifacting or blacking out occurred, well, only during the middle of the installation, but its normal. Then it prompted me to restart my computer to complete installation which I did and no artifacts showed up and everything was fine, tried a graphics intensive game, everything was normal and felt cooler.

Is it normal for the screen to artifact when rolling back to the previous driver like that? I almost spazzed out thinking omg... Nvidia...

 

I don't think so, that's kind of weird. Good thing it was software though and not a hardware problem! That could have ended poorly.

 

Never had that happen to me, but oh well, doesn't seem like it was permanent or anything so I wouldn't worry about it. Sometimes errors like that can happen, I guess. Nothings perfect!

 

It happened to me after I started that Dell Drivers Poll thread... I wanted to get back to 156.63 just because that was the original driver that came installed from the factory (and also because there were some who said they were still using it without any problems)..

So, I went back to 156.63 using the file download from the Dell Drivers page.. before installing this I did not uninstall the previous driver. I went ahead as such... So, I clicked on that file to install it as per the instructions.. When I did that my whole system went freaking crazy, screens flashing, colored lines all over, and then the system rebooted by itself.. and I was half dead by this time

I checked driver details, it said 156.63 and everything was fine actually. had no problems after that with anything or any behavior or performance or whatever... But it was so damn scary, freak-the-life-out-of-you kinds...

But then I just decided to get back to 174.31 because I had been using this for long and it works really well, everything signed (all those digital signature things) and stuff and I just wanted to get back to this.. and mostly because I got freaked out with all those screen flickering, black spots, colored lines etc etc... and I thought this is probably because I went back in versions or something like that.. rather its better to update / progress to advanced drivers, preferably. Anyway, so I did a rollback driver using the 'roll back driver' option, and it went back to 174.31 without any problems, or without any flickerings or anything.. It was in fact very silent roll back I would say... and then the driver details everything was 174.31 etc etc.... And its been fine since.

BUT, now I do not have the roll back option anymore - meaning, that button is 'not clickable' if I may say that... its like disabled!!

So, does it mean there is no driver to roll back now? How come there was one when I installed 156.63? Is it because I installed it without uninstalling the 174.31? and then in that case, when I went back to 174.31, did it completely remove the 156.63 I had installed?