Where Windows stores NVIDIA driver version and how to change or spoof it?
The best way to resolve this issue is to update your video driver. However, obviously not every NVIDIA card has them, as support has been dropped for older chips like GTS 250 and GTX 285 by NVIDIA, no newer drivers exist, and Windows 10 uses them in legacy mode. You may also try – try! – to spoof driver version to trick the game into launching. The problem is it’s now exactly clear where Nvidia stores this version number nowadays, as old command line command doesn’t work anymore. However, the newer Powershell command retrieves this data.
Get-WmiObject Win32_PnPSignedDriver| select devicename, driverversion | where {$_.devicename -like “*nvidia*”}
Take a closer look at this number and see that the last 5 digits, with the first followed by a dot, could be converted to 372.70 which corresponds to the installed version of the Nvidia drivers installed. So copy this number and search the registry to replace it. You may just replace the 3. with 4. Also, the 3.72 number occurs in multiple threads of the registry, and you should change it in each on them. Reboot and try to launch the game. But don’t get too excited though. Even if you will succeed to bypass the error, the game may still not work. Developers require certain minimum driver versions for a reason, perhaps they are the first that support certain features. It is stupid to expect something new like BF1 requiring DirectX 11 or later, to work on a 10 year old graphic chip that supports DirectX 10 only.