I'm not too worried about the Asus screen, I know it's just a bitmap it loads as a splash, just startled me for a sec.
I'm using CCleaner instead of Driversweeper, been using it for a long time on several systems, never had any driver related issues whatsoever;
I cleaned files + registry 2x right after uninstalling everything Nvidia related, and again 2x after booting into "safe mode". Running XP 32-bit.
Seems like it's not actually installing anything. Switched back to 175.16 without problems, installer took a bit longer to install (5-6sec. instead of just 1sec.).