Is there a free trial?

Yes. The 30-day free trial gives you full access to all Pro features: unlimited game protection, auto-detect new installs, GPU Pinned, and everything planned for future platforms. After 30 days, your card is billed at the Pro rate unless you cancel. You can cancel at any time before the trial ends.

Is there a free version?

Yes. The free plan protects one game permanently. No trial period, no credit card required. Upgrade to a paid plan for unlimited game protection, auto-detection of new installs, GPU Pinned (NVIDIA settings save and restore), and all future platform support.

Which platforms does GamePinned support?

Steam, Epic Games Store, and Riot Games. Newly installed games are detected and protected automatically across all three platforms. GOG, Battle.net, EA App, and Ubisoft Connect are planned for future releases.

Can users still play games and download updates?

Yes. GamePinned only prevents deletion. Launching, updating, and patching all work exactly as before. Users will not notice anything has changed unless they attempt to remove a protected game.

What happens when someone tries to uninstall a protected game?

The game stays installed. On Steam, the game reappears in the library within seconds. On Epic Games, the uninstall reports a failure and the game remains. On Riot Games, the files stay on disk. Opening the launcher and clicking Install re-registers the game instantly with no re-download.

Can users stop or disable GamePinned?

No. Standard users cannot stop the service, change its configuration, or access the management panel. Windows service permissions are hardened so that only administrators can stop or modify it. An admin password is required for any changes.

How does GamePinned prevent game uninstallation?

GamePinned locks game files using Windows file system permissions built into the OS. When a blocked account tries to uninstall a game, Windows denies the deletion. The launcher receives a permission error and the uninstall cannot complete. No third-party drivers or kernel hooks are used.

How do I block game uninstalls on Steam, Epic Games, and Riot Games?

GamePinned blocks game uninstalls by locking game folders at the Windows file system level. Install GamePinned, select the games you want to protect, and click Lock. Users can still play and update those games. Only uninstallation is prevented. It works on Steam, Epic Games Store, and Riot Games (Valorant, League of Legends, and more).

Does it work in gaming cafes, PC bangs, and internet centers?

Yes. GamePinned is built for shared-PC environments: gaming cafes, PC bangs, warnets, comshops, cyber cafes, esports arenas, and any Windows setup where multiple users access the same machine. It blocks all standard Windows accounts by default, covering every customer account.

How do I uninstall a game as an admin?

Enable Maintenance Mode from the GamePinned dashboard. Protection pauses immediately, allowing you to uninstall or swap games freely through Steam, Epic Games, or Riot Games. Disable Maintenance Mode when done. Protection resumes.

Can I use GamePinned at home to stop family members from deleting games?

Yes. GamePinned works for personal use too. Protect your game library from siblings, kids, roommates, or anyone else who uses your PC. The free plan protects one game permanently at no cost.

Home/Blog/GPU management

How to Lock NVIDIA Control Panel Settings on a Shared PC

April 2026·5 min read

A customer sits down at one of your cafe PCs, opens NVIDIA Control Panel from the system tray, cranks digital vibrance to 100%, forces V-Sync on, and switches power management to Maximum Performance. They leave. The next customer inherits all of it. Oversaturated screen, capped frame rate, extra heat. No one tells you, you just slowly get worse reviews.

If you have searched for a way to lock NVIDIA Control Panel, you have probably found the same answer everyone else does: there is no built-in way. No Group Policy template, no kiosk mode, no admin lock. The one relevant thread on the NVIDIA Developer Forums has been open since 2017 with no answer from NVIDIA.

What this guide does: GamePinned saves your NVIDIA Control Panel settings as a named profile and restores the profile automatically on every reboot, before any user logs in. Customers can still change settings mid-session. On the next reboot, everything resets.

Why there is no native lock

NVIDIA Control Panel stores your settings in the NVIDIA DRS (Driver Settings) database, on disk, under ProgramData. Standard Windows account restrictions do not block access to it. Group Policy can hide parts of the Windows Control Panel, but the NVIDIA Control Panel shell extension is reachable from the system tray icon regardless, and even hiding it does not reset the DRS database if someone has already changed it.

NVIDIA runs an iCafe Certified Program in several markets. It is a hardware partnership, not a lock. It does not provide any tool for saving profiles or resetting DRS between sessions.

The workable options are: (1) revert the entire drive on every reboot with something like Deep Freeze, which also wipes game updates and Windows patches, or (2) specifically restore the DRS files on every reboot and leave the rest of the PC alone. GPU Pinned is the second option.

Settings customers actually change

Digital vibrance. Competitive FPS players crank it up to spot enemies. The next customer gets a cartoon-saturated desktop.
V-Sync. Turning it on adds input lag and caps frame rate to the monitor. The next customer inherits the handicap silently.
Power management mode. Setting it to Prefer Maximum Performance reduces idle downclocking. Higher heat, higher power bill, same idle.
Anti-aliasing override. MSAA forced globally drops FPS in every game that does not explicitly disable it.
Resolution and refresh rate. NVIDIA Control Panel can change these independently of the Windows display settings, and the customer does not always realize they changed them.
Per-game 3D profiles. A customer overrides AA or texture filtering for one game and every future customer of that game inherits it.

All of this survives reboot. The Windows Display Settings lock in Group Policy does not touch any of it. Reboot Restore Rx and Deep Freeze do revert it, but they revert everything else with it, which means game updates and Windows patches require you to unthaw, update, re-freeze, and reboot — on every PC, every time.

Steps

1. Configure NVIDIA the way you want it

Open NVIDIA Control Panel and set everything the way you want the machine to stay. Global 3D settings, per-game 3D settings under Program Settings, resolution, refresh rate, monitor orientation, the whole picture. Apply all the changes. Close the panel.

2. Install GamePinned

Download it from gamepinned.com and run the installer. It needs admin rights because it writes a system-level service that applies the profile before any user logs in. The install takes under a minute.

3. Save a profile

Open GamePinned, click the NVIDIA tab in the sidebar. Click Save New Profile, name it (Default, Tournament, After-Hours, whatever makes sense), and save. The profile captures:

The full NVIDIA 3D settings database (global and per-game)
Display configuration for every connected monitor: resolution, refresh rate, color depth, orientation, position

Both the classic NVIDIA Control Panel and the newer NVIDIA App write to the same underlying files, so the profile covers both.

4. Enable auto-restore

Toggle Auto-restore on startup. From this point forward, the active profile is applied on every reboot before any user session starts. Customers can open NVIDIA Control Panel, change anything, it sticks until reboot, and then it resets.

5. Test it

Open NVIDIA Control Panel, move the digital vibrance slider to something obvious like 100%, apply. Reboot. Log back in, open NVIDIA Control Panel, check vibrance. It is back to your saved value.

Multiple profiles (up to 5)

GamePinned stores up to 5 named profiles per PC. Each has its own Restore, Set Auto, Rename, and Delete buttons. Useful if you run a tournament with specific settings on weekends and a different configuration on weekdays, or if you want a rollback profile in case you change the active one and regret it later.

Switching the active profile takes effect on the next reboot. You can also click Restore on any profile to apply it immediately without rebooting.

Why not Deep Freeze

Deep Freeze reverts the entire drive on every reboot, which does reset NVIDIA settings as a side effect. It also resets everything else: Windows updates, game updates, anti-cheat updates, cached customer accounts, Steam login state. Anything you want to keep between sessions has to be applied in a special thaw mode, which requires a reboot to enter, a reboot to exit, and disables protection in between.

If the reason you were looking at Deep Freeze is specifically NVIDIA settings, you are paying the full reboot-to-restore overhead for a narrow problem. GPU Pinned resets just the GPU and display settings on reboot, nothing else. Game updates, Windows patches, and driver updates apply normally.

Full comparison: Deep Freeze vs GamePinned.

Common questions

Does this work with the NVIDIA App (the new one)?

Yes. The NVIDIA App and the classic NVIDIA Control Panel both write to the same DRS files under ProgramData. GamePinned snapshots and restores those files, so whichever panel the customer opens, their changes are reset on reboot.

Does it work with AMD or Intel GPUs?

No. GPU Pinned is NVIDIA-only right now. AMD and Intel integrated graphics do not have the same DRS database format, and their driver configuration is stored differently.

What if the customer changes settings and I need them to stay for a while?

Turn off auto-restore from the NVIDIA tab. The profile still exists; you can apply it manually by clicking Restore on the profile card. Changes take effect immediately without a reboot.

Does this require a specific NVIDIA driver version?

No. Any recent NVIDIA driver works. The DRS file format has been stable across driver versions for years.

Is it a paid feature?

Yes, GPU Pinned is on the Elite and Pro plans. The NVIDIA tab is visible on the free plan so you can see GPU status, but saving and restoring profiles requires a paid license. There is a 30-day free trial that includes GPU Pinned.

Download GamePinned Read the GPU Pinned docs