I finally decided to reinstall windows 10 after not being able to update from 1607 or 1703. (Not sure whether the install was blocked or just bad system corruption issues), but the system performed okay. Now after updating to 1909 i get severe stuttering, which i believe is due to an issue with RST drivers. The stuttering begins as soon as a mouse is visible during the fresh install.

Specs:
i7-950 (no current OC)
24gb triple channel
Asus p6t deluxe v2 -- X58 Ich10r (current bios)
raid 1 on two 1tb WD black and raid 0 on two 128gb ssds

Question: Clean install of 1703 works out the gate with version 13.X rst driver. Any never version of the Rst drive causes stuttering. Also, any newer version of win10 is pre-loaded with a newer version of the RST driver and therefore doesn't work.

Is there any way to force windows to use an older driver when currently booted into the OS? If not, and a slipstream of older driver/removal of bad drive is necessary; Is there a max version of win10 that I will be able to use? (Not sure if there is an internal limitation of win10 that prevents usage of older drivers)

>Is there any way to force windows to use an older driver when currently booted into the OS?
without reinstalling, if i recall correctly you can use the "Have Disk" manual update method in device manager to force the older driver, and clean the remains of it via DriverStoreExplorer (RAPR).

Thanks, I cant believe that it took so long to search and figure out this issue. Glad that i found this site again. Was worried that there may have been some incompatibility with other subsystems and the older driver.

Thanks for the great guide, apparently Nlite is now requiring a license to remove "blue locked" components.