According to some reports in the Nvidia forums, the latest GeForce v397.31 drivers, which were released two days ago on Wednesday, are causing PC reset loops for some users. The complaints seem to come mainly from those with a 1060 card, but the issue is affecting different systems too.
Affected users can install the drivers as normal, but upon restarting the Windows system, they are again prompted to complete the install, which then loops with a restart in between. A few of the typical issues from users can be viewed below:
Windows 8.1 64 Bit - GTX 1060 6Gb - 397.31 was offered through Geforce experience after install it asked for a restart (which it has not on previous installs of drivers via Geforce experience) after restart i lost my second screen and open hardware monitor showed no GFX info,a pop up tells me to force reinstall driver, this did not work and kept doing same thing restart force reinstall, next i tried a clean install still same problem so went to Nvidia drivers and re downloaded 391.35 problem solved i guess the new driver has issues - Nvidia forums
What the hell my 1060 6gb won’t update to 397.31!!!
updated windows manually Iv uninstilled the drivers and reinstalled them from there website command proms the lot in the end I had to got back to 391.35 shame because I want the drivers for battle tech and it don’t even work!
expected more from nvidia any help appreciate - Nvidia forums
I´ve GTX780. After instaling the new Driver, Forza Horizon 3 will go back to Desktop with no message of an error. Try to install the old Driver.
Update: With the old Driver it work fine again - Nvidia forums
In addition, it appears that the driver update prompt is being offered on systems that are no longer supported, where it fails with "installation cannot continue" which appears to be a whole new issue on card detection and eligibility.
Right now there appears to be a working method to roll back to v391.35. Affected users need to download the older driver and the Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) software. The next step is to reboot into safe mode and uninstall the v397.31 driver using DDU, you can then boot normally and install the older v391.35 drivers.
So far, the topic on the Nvidia forums has reached eight pages, without support from an Nvidia representative.
Source: Nvidia forums via HEXUS
Update April 28: Nvidia customer care responded to the topic on page 9:
We are aware of the issue preventing the driver from installing on a very small subset of GeForce GTX 1060 cards. For now continue using the previous driver with your Palit GeForce GTX 1060 card until we provide a solution.
In lieu of using the third party DDU app to remove the bad drivers (see above), you can also opt to "clean install" the older (391.35) drivers, upon which Nvidia will attempt to fully remove the bad display driver before installing them.