nVidia Forceware 185.85 Driver Problems

[chikorita157]

Ever since I upgraded to nVidia Forceware 185.85 official laptop drivers, when I play a game, the screen turns black and then the game reappears with the FPS even slower than before. I never had this problem when I was on a modified Forceware 185.65 drivers.

Is there any suggestions to fix this problem? Note that I'm not reverting anything under 185.xx series. Also, have anyone experienced the same problem I'm having?

[Vexx]

I ended up retconning back to my last available release, the 182.xx release. The 185.85 drivers made Warhammer Online and a few other games jerky as hell. It was damned nauseating to ride a raptor mount and even running was a problem.

Every few patches it seems like nvidia dorks something up.... usually the next round of release fixes it. I'm getting the impression they just have a buttload of "one game only" code fragments cluttering up their package that collide with each other at times.

So no, nothing to offer at the moment if you want to stick with 185.xx ... haven't seen any switch toggling suggestions yet.

edit: I've filed issues both at nvidia and with Warhammer Online (I figure WAR has a bigger shout than I do...)

[mechabao]

Some things that might help(though I doubt it):
1) Completely uninstall and reinstall your drivers.
2) Tinker with in-game graphics settings. Stuff like disabling AA and AF, changing refresh rate, resolution etc.
3) Do the same with the nVidia control panel
4) Check http://us.download.nvidia.com/Window...ease_Notes.pdf

[chikorita157]

I installed Dox's modified Forceware 185.85 and completely uninstall the official Forceware... I'll report if it crashes again while playing with the game which will most likely happen.

Also want to note that I'm using Windows Vista Business X64 SP2, since 32-bit have no support for 4GB of RAM officially.

[Vexx]

yeah, I'm using Vista 64 bit as well (d'oh should have said that)

@mechabao
1) yeah, I always do that long time paranoid and hater of driver debris.
2) frankly, if I have to do that then the driver is broken and its easier to back down to the previous release (which works fine by the way ).

Usually when nvidia breaks a driver release - they rarely *say* anything, just auto-magically a new release appears sooner than usual with "fixed some stuff" in the notes.

[mechabao]

I rolled back to the 182.50 drivers too ever since I noticed that the drivers kept crashing themselves and MPC when I tried maximizing the MPC windows or going full-screen while watching [m.3.3.w']s releases of Hatsukoi Limited. Not too sure about the effect on games though; I rarely play any of them lately.

[denice25]

better replace your drivers...

[chikorita157]

After playing some Audiosurf, the driver again crashed on me with the screen disappearing and reappearing slower than ever.... even after installing the modified drivers.

I guess the 185.85 series drivers are fundamentally flawed.... hopefully nVidia will fix these drivers soon... in the meantime, I'm reverting back to 185.68 drivers.

[Vexx]

Thanks for the update.... yeah, its easier to just wait. I tend to save the last 3 or 4 driver releases for just such occasions.

... and I see they STILL don't clean up after themselves when they expand the installer kits :P Just noticed the last 10 revisions of the driver installer are sitting in that NVIDIA folder taking up space.

[chikorita157]

It seems that 185.68 also have the same exact problem since my game did the same thing and crashed and become unplayable after it reappeared... It seems that nVidia aren't very good at writing drivers that don't crash under 64-bit Windows.

[Vexx]

Their 64-bit drivers do often seem to be an afterthought... which is weird since a great deal of their high-end stuff goes directly to a crowd that "high-ends" the rest of their rig, d'oh somewhat?

[Hyperion]

Just my 2 cents, but these drivers cause me no problems on the Win7 64-bit RC. Been using them for two weeks now, and I've had no driver crashes with games or MPC.

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by Hyperion

Just my 2 cents, but these drivers cause me no problems on the Win7 64-bit RC. Been using them for two weeks now, and I've had no driver crashes with games or MPC.

In my case, there's been no crashes but the performance and frame rate in Warhammer have gone to hell. Shifting back to the 182 series driver made the problem go away -- shifted back and forth just to make sure. I'm running vista64+sp2+ on my game machine. My win7 box just has an old ATI card in it at the moment but I was going to swap it for one of my less-old nvidia cards so I'll see how it plays...

[chikorita157]

I have tried Windows 7 x64 RC1 a few weeks back and the drivers in 185 series were stable, but there were performance issues in which Windows 7 wasn't getting the full performance as it were for Windows Vista. (I don't use Beta OS as my production/day to day OS, so I had to restore it back to Vista)

Either way, nVidia really needs to improve their support for their 64-bit drivers since more computers come with 64-bit version of Windows and 64-bit is the future.

[mechabao]

Originally Posted by chikorita157

I have tried Windows 7 x64 RC1 a few weeks back and the drivers in 185 series were stable, but there were performance issues in which Windows 7 wasn't getting the full performance as it were for Windows Vista. (I don't use Beta OS as my production/day to day OS, so I had to restore it back to Vista)

Either way, nVidia really needs to improve their support for their 64-bit drivers since more computers come with 64-bit version of Windows and 64-bit is the future.

They can't even get their 32-bit drivers to work flawlessly.

[chikorita157]

Originally Posted by mechabao

They can't even get their 32-bit drivers to work flawlessly.

I did remember that the nVidia drivers were very unstable after the launch of Vista and responsible for 30% of Windows Vista's crashes which is the lead cause of the most crashes in Vista (which isn't Microsoft's fault).

I didn't have to deal much with nVidia Graphics Drivers before since I ran Vista on a Macbook Pro (late 2006, Core2 Duo model which had a Mobility Radeon X1600) which had a ATi card and the video card never crash. nVidia really needs to get on the ball with better Vista and 7 drivers that don't have performance issues and crashes.

[chikorita157]

Another temporary solution I found to restore the performance after nvlddmkm crash by simply disabling and re-enabling the nVidia Graphics Card via Device Manager which will kill the graphics driver and start it again without any performance loss... It's at least a temporary solution without having to completely reboot Windows.

[chikorita157]

I did a clean install of nVidia's newest Beta drivers (using DriverCleaner), 186.08 and it doesn't crash after playing nearly a hour of Audiosurf, but it still crashes minutes after when I try to play Test Drive Unlimited for some odd reason.

Edit: Scratch that... it's still giving me the same exact problems like in 185.85... and no improvements... It's still crashing.

Drivers:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_wi...6.08_beta.html - WinVista/7 32-bit
http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_wi...6.08_beta.html - WinVista/7 64-bit

[Takeru]

I don't know if this will help you, but I use the latest driver from laptopvideo2go.com under 64bit Windows 7 and it works fine. Haven't crashed or had any issues.

Don't know if this is true with the nVidia 9400M GT in your unibody, but it works fine on the 8600M GT running in my mid-2007 MacBook Pro.

[chikorita157]

The uMBP locks into the nVidia Geforce 9600m GT and this issue wasn't present in SP1 when I was using the 185.xx drivers... it may be something to do with SP2...

I'm not going to transition to Windows 7 until my university provides a low-cost/free copy of it since it will be probably be too expensive to buy the upgrade which is always typical of Microsoft.