How to Fix “Nvidia Installer Cannot Continue” Error?

If you have a Nvidia graphics card and you are facing “nvidia installer cannot continue” while you are installing the nvidia panel , then this article is for you. These issues with Nvidia cards are not new, but luckily there are ways around it. Read on to find a method that may help you fix this issue with your installation.

What causes the “Nvidia installer cannot continue” error

First up, nvidia card is a “Display adapter” ie. your PC uses it to display frames onto your monitor when you are gaming or watching movies etc. Maybe the driver of the card is not updated, or the installer is unable to detect the necessary hardware, or your graphics card is offline ( disabled ) and like that, list of issues goes on. We have compiled some work-arounds for some popular Nvidia card issues.

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How to fix the “nvidia installer cannot continue screen” ?

While none of the methods have a 100% success rate as problems vary from PC to PC , these are some popular methods to fix the error post screen.

Method 1 : See if the graphics card is disabled

To check if your card is offline or not,

• Go to start menu and search for “device manager”
• Once opened , look for the option “display adapter”
• The one that says “Geforce” is your nvidia graphics card
• Check if its disabled by looking for a “downward arrow”
• Right click on it and set “enabled”

Once the card is online , try going through the nvidia installer again and see if the problem goes away

Method 2 : Update your display drivers

For updating your display drivers , follow the same steps as method 1 to reach to the display adapter

• This time we are looking for “update drivers option”
• Click on “search for drivers automatically”
• Let it download the files and install them
• Once complete , restart your computer

Once the PC is restarted , hopefully the nvidia installer now does work !

Method 3 : Updating drivers via driver manager or by manual download

Perhaps method 2 was unable to automatically download and fix nvidia card drivers for you. But you can download it manually as well. Just make sure you follow along and don’t download the wrong driver as it can further mess things up.

• Under the “display adapter” of device manager , select your gpu
• right click to view “Details”

• Set properties to “Hardware Ids” to view Vendor details
• The hardware ID looks like : PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_67EF&SUBSYS_125D1025&REV_C0

The Vendor is 1002 and Device ID is 67EF . Now you have these details in hand ,

• Head over to Device hunt
• Search for your compatible driver by using your Ids which we found , and hit download
• You can also download your driver by going to Nvidia downloads
• Once they are downloaded , go to “adapter settings” and choose “update driver”
• Now this time , select “search for drivers on this device” and search for the drivers that you just downloaded

Now that you have correct drivers installed , the “nvidia installer cannot continue” error should go away Alternatively, you can use free download manager tools  like Drivermax or Drivereasy to install correct drivers easily.

Method 4 : Completely deleting Nvidia programs from your computer and run the installer again

Perhaps the installer doesnt want you to overwrite some pre-existing files or programs and thus your “installer can not continue” . So you can try uninstalling any Nvidia programs off your computer and try to run the installer again. To uninstall everything,

• Go to start and search “control panel”
• Under control Panel go to > Programs > Uninstall a program
• Search Nvidia programs and right click to uninstall them manually

• Restart your computer and try installing that installer again.

Method 5 : Kill all Nvidia processes and also disable your anti-virus

Sometimes background Nvidia processes might cling to a file and would not let modify it and thus the installer fails to complete. Similarly , your Antivirus software might now allow the installer to make changes to the computer. It may think that installer files are malicious and straight-away delete them. For your installer to work through both of these , we need to stop both of them for a while

Steps for stopping Nvidia background processes

• Open the “Task Manager” by ctrl+shift+Esc 
• Under the processes panel , look for all processes named with Nvidia and click on “END PROCESS” button for all of them

To disable your Anti-virus

It depends on the Software of the anti-virus software for the way it is disabled. But you can try

• clicking on “icons menu” in your task bar to open your antivirus
• go to settings to disable it

Hopefully this step fixed the issue with your installer

Method 6 : Try renaming your Nvidia folder in program files

Whenever we install any application , it creates a folder in the “program files” folder. Same applies on software updates as well . If your installer can not continue , it could be due to it simply doesnt want you to make changes to the folder. So by renaming the folder to something else , installer will not see the folder listed there and it will install the application freshly again.

• Go to your System Drive ( in which windows is installed , which is mostly C: )
• Navigate to “Program Files” ( not the x64 folder )
• Search “Nvidia Corporation”
• Once you find the folder , rename it to something else, by using the rename shortcut F2 or right click > rename
• Try running the installer again

This should re-install the whole application for you.

Summing up,

Its very common for drivers to malfunction and cause other system problems. If you have ever dealt with drivers or restoring them, you will know that they are completely hit or miss. Sometimes one method would work while sometimes it doesn’t. But Hopefully this guide helped you fix your issue with your nvidia installer.