I found some info that may be helpful to some folks having issues with Nvidia drivers or display issues. I rebuilt my system to help troubleshoot my own Nvidia driver issues but did it using my old 4-5 year old Windows install media which did not fix the issues running my 3090. Now I know why. Newer Nvidia drivers aren’t compatible with older Windows builds and it’s even in the release notes.
Nvidia now specifically excludes Threshold 1 & 2, and Redstone 1 & 2. The oldest version of Windows supported is Redstone 3 which was released October 2017.
“Drivers for Turing GPUs will not be installed on systems with Windows 10 RS2 or earlier. This includes Windows 10 Threshold 1, Threshold 2, Redstone 1, and Redstone 2 operating systems.” - Nvidia GEForce driver 471.11 release notes
Also, https://meterpreter.org/nvidias-new-graphics-card-no-longer-supports-older-windows-10-systems/
And, reading between the lines in the Wiki page on Windows 10 versions/releases (Windows 10 version history - Wikipedia), those have to be slightly different Windows versions because each version eventually loses support. That wouldn’t happen if they all built into identical OS’es when fully patched. Various combinations of graphics hardware, Windows version, and driver version could have incompatibilities.
Upshot of this stuff is that if you are going to reinstall Windows anyway for whatever reason, use a freshly downloaded windows.iso from Microsoft. Don’t use any install media you may already have since it could put you on one of the dead-ended older release version lines. When I reinstalled from the old media I got updates and all, but I still couldn’t install the newer Nvidia drivers. It was only after I installed from a fresh windows.iso that the Nvidia drivers worked ok.
But if your system was built or rebuilt using install media older than the October 2017, 1709 release (Redstone 3), and you are having driver trouble, this might be why. Unfortunately it might also mean you might not get past some issues until you rebuild Windows with a fresh windows.iso.
If anyone knows more about this stuff, please add to or correct me. I am not telling anyone to rebuild. Just putting this out in case others can verify or refute. I had no idea this issue existed but the information is out there.