Updating drivers is one of the crucial parts of your keeping your PC healthy. Making sure that everything remains updated will not only allow your PC to function properly, but it'll also keep you from troubleshooting all the time by blocking out unwanted bugs and errors. But what if you are having trouble downloading and installing the drivers themselves? This happens a lot, specifically with Nvidia GeForce Experience, which sometimes refuses to fetch the right drivers for your hardware from the internet. If you've encountered this issue and are wondering how to fix the 'Nvidia driver download failed' error on Windows, then I've highlighted a few troubleshooting methods below for you to check out.

AMD, Intel, and Nvidia logos overlaid on a picture of a graphics card
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The 'Nvidia driver download failed' as I previously mentioned is a fairly common error that you may encounter on your PC. There are a few things you can do to fix the issue, so let's start with some basic troubleshooting methods before moving on to more extreme measures like ditching the utility to manually download the drivers.

Make sure you've downloaded and installed the latest Windows update on your PC before proceeding.

Enable automatic downloads in Nvidia GeForce Experience

The first and the most obvious thing to do is checking whether you've enabled automatic downloads on the Nvidia GeForce Experience client. This particular setting is disabled by default, and you must enable it manually to ensure the latest drivers updates are downloaded automatically. To do this:

  1. Open the GeForce Experience client on your PC, and click the settings cog icon to enter the settings page.
    An image showing the highlighted settings cog icon on GeForce Experience client.
  2. Ensure you are on the General settings page by clicking the General tab on the left sidebar.
    An image showing the highlighted general tab and the downloads section in GeForce Experience settings page.
  3. Scroll down till you find the Automatically download driver updates and let me choose when to install option under the Downloads tab, and check the box to enable it.
    An image showing the highlighted Downloads section in GeForce Experience settings page.

And that's it, you've now enabled the setting that automatically downloads the latest driver updates for you to install. I suggest restarting the GeForce Experience client after enabling this setting to ensure the updated settings have been applied successfully. You may even notice a new pop-up for any new drivers that are up for grabs.

Reinstall the GeForce Experience client

If enabling the automatic driver download option did nothing, then you might want to consider reinstalling the GeForce Experience client itself. I've personally encountered various issues while using the GeForce Experience client that would only go away if I reinstalled the client. This could be one of those issues, and here's how you can reinstall the GeForce Experience on your Windows PC.

  1. Press Win + I keys on your keyboard to enter Windows Settings, and click the Apps option from the left sidebar.
    A screenshot showing the highlighted apps option on Windows Settings page.
  2. Click the Installed Apps option.
    Highlighted Installed apps option in Windows settings page
  3. Use the search bar on the top to locate the GeForce Experience client.
    A screenshot showing the highlighted search box within the installed apps section in Windows settings page.
  4. Click the three-dot icon next to the GeForce Experience listing, and select the Uninstall option.
    A screenshot showing the highlighted pop-up menu showing the uninstall button in Windows settings.
  5. Select Uninstall again to confirm your selection to remove the current version of GeForce Experience from your PC.
    A screenshot showing the highlighted uninstall option within the Installed apps menu in Windows settings.
  6. Head to Nvidia's download page to fetch the latest version of the GeForce Experience client.
    A screenshot showing the highlighted download button on the geforce experience website.
  7. Run the downloaded setup file to install the client, and then login when prompted to complete the setup.
  8. Follow the steps highlighted in the section above to enable automatic driver downloads to ensure your PC downloads the drivers automatically.

Reinstalling the client should fix most of the underlying problems, and you should be able to enable automatic driver downloads and do other things with the client without any issues.

Download the drivers manually

Reinsalling the GeForce Experience client should fix most of the errors you are facing, but you can always take matters in your own hands and manually install the drivers yourself. Manually downloading and installing the drivers is guaranteed to work, so I suggest exploring this option if none of the troubleshooting methods highlighted above works for you. To manually download and install Nvidia drivers:

  1. Visit the Nvidia download page, and choose the correct Product Type, Product Series, and Product to fetch the appropriate drivers.
  2. Select the GPU, operating system and the correct type of driver. For GeForce GPUs, you'll have Game Ready Driver and Studio Driver options.
    Screenshot of Nvidia's driver download website with the fields filled in to choose the correct driver and product
  3. Click Search to find the latest driver available for your hardware based on the options you've selected.
  4. Click Download and then click Download again to begin downloading the driver.
  5. Run the installer and follow the steps to extract the Nvidia installer.
  6. When prompted, choose whether to install the Graphics Driver and GeForce Experience or just the driver itself. Click Agree and continue.
    Screenshot of the Nvidia installer asking the user whether to install the Nvidia driver along or include GeForce Experience.
  7. Choose whether to use an Express install with default settings or the Custom install if you want to change settings.
  8. If you selected Custom install, choose which components to install. You can also choose to perform a clean installation to remove your existing settings.
    Screenshot of Nvidia installer asking the user to choose the driver components to install
  9. Wait for the process to finish and click Close.

And that's how easy it is to download and install the latest Nvidia drivers on your PC manually. This is guaranteed to work, as manually downloading and installing the driver on your PC leaves no room for error. Just select the correct options to fetch the appropriate drivers for your hardware, and you should be good to go.

GeForce Experience is a great utility that works for the most part

Those are some simple troubleshooting methods to try if the Nvidia GeForce Experience fails to download the drivers on your Windows PC. Nvidia's GeForce Experience is one of the best utilities you can install on your PC, and it works well for the most part. It is, however, known to be a bit unreliable at times like these when it simply refuses to work, especially when it comes to driver updates. I suggest trying different troubleshooting methods I've highlighted above to get things up and running in no time. Reinstalling the client on your Windows PC should fix most of the problems, but you can also download and install the drivers manually if nothing else seems to work.