RivaTuner Installation Broken on Mirror Download Sites
RivaTuner is a wonderful and a very powerful graphics card and display tweaking utility designed by Alexey Nicolaychuk (AKA: Unwinder). It allows overclocking your graphics card, saving of profiles, and real time monitoring of almost every component in your system.
For more info on RivaTuner, visit
Recently as we enthusiastically tried to upgrade to the much awaited v2.20 of this software, we ran into some problems to get it working. We decided to write this guide to help any other enthusiasts in the community that may run into the same problem.
Specifically the problem is with the Windows Vista 64-bit version which requires signed drivers for the software installed on it.
The download package from Guru3D, the official download site of RivaTuner, comes with a RivaTuner220Drv.rtu ( as shown in the image below ) which contains the signed drivers needed during installation for the software to function correctly on Windows Vista 64-bit version.
If this file is present in the same folder as the RivaTuner220.exe file which is the installer file, you get a dialog which asks if you want to install updates for RivaTuner as shown below:
Pressing yes will give Windows the necessary signed drivers and allow RivaTuner to function normally on your PC.
Problem with downloading off Mirror Downloads
Downloading from mirror sites such as Softpedia or from MajorGeeks only gives you the RivaTuner220.exe file. The RivaTuner220Drv.rtu file is missing. As a result, Windows Vista x64 doesn’t get the needed signed drivers and you get errors like in the images:
RivaTuner starts with reduced functionality and looks like this:
The only way to run with full functionality by download off a mirror, is to disable driver signing every time you boot-up Vista by pressing F8, which is an inconvenience.
So our suggestion for you is to download RivaTuner from its official home to avoid any errors or confusion.
http://downloads.guru3d.com/RivaTuner-v2.20-download-163.html
This is what a fully functional RivaTuner looks like:
Our thanks to Alexey Nicolaychuk for providing a terrific program to the community !
Happy RIVA-Tuning !
