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Looking at their forums, it should become apparent that nvidia does not care about problems their customers are having. Therefore, I have to turn to people they might listen to or work with to solve such problems - Windows and Microsoft.
I am running Windows 7 Ultimate x64 (Retail). My video card is a nVidia Geforce 8800 GT.
The issue is that the video is locking up, flickering, freezing, and even sometimes causing the "blue screen of death" - The problem is widely reported, and is also widely misdiagnosed as overheating. The card is not overheating, let me be quite clear on this. The card is also not old and ready to die (Another common misdiagnosis by techs who would brush difficult problems away.)
The issue is: Whatever nVidia has done with their drivers, they do not get along with Windows 7. The issue, if you search the web, is exclusively a Windows 7 problem.
I saw an article earlier regarding something that was implemented in Vista that would detect if the video drivers were crashing, and attempt to close and restart them without rebooting. I can not remember what this feature is called, nor can I find that info again (I found it while at work and did not save the URL sadly) - but it certainly seems like that's what is going on. The video will flicker while I am in a game, the game will freeze, and then after a second, the screen will go black, then the game will come back up, but at lower graphic detail. Evenually, the game will do the same thing again, and go back to full detail.
That's just a theory, though, of course.
I have tried the latest nvidia drivers, as well as the drivers from Windows update. I have not yet tried the nvidia beta drivers, but have read from other users that there was no luck in using them. Some users reported luck when using the default drivers of WIndows 7, or the Windows Update drivers, but I had no luck, and many others also didn't. I may try rolling back to some much older Vista drivers to see what happens.
In any case, my purpose here was less to get an answer, and more to really just spread the word more about this problem. Maybe a Microsoft employee will see this post and report it to someone who can have their people talk to nvidia's people, so to speak, because nvidia people do not frequent their forums. There are threads there with issues unsolved from over 2 years ago, and those are similar to some other issues we still have today with TV-Out. But that's another topic entirely.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Well, no problems so far beyond some flicker. The flicker does make me nervous, but otherwise, no crashes in almost 24 hours. I have been running Folding@Home on it constantly and it doesn't seem to have had any issues with that, either. Folding@Home has it running at 97-98% GPU usage constantly, and it's sitting at 67 degrees Celsius, which is just fine. It is looking more and more like it was my 8800.
But I do still wonder what the ____ could have caused it to act so crazy, hmm...
Know this is an odd comment. but do you have the Steroscopic 3d driver running as a service... if so disable it.. sometimes Nvidia will install and enable this driver for you, and it can cause issues if its enabled and you don't need it..
Should appear in the services list..
Well , Steroscopic 3d drivers is a Windows Vista / Win7 feature , but i had the same problem in both XP and Win 7...
Thanks for your help, guys. I'll try all the things you have suggested.
On the list of things I had already thought of doing:
My power supply certainly has the amperage.
Card is seated fine.
Power connector is fine.
Dxdiag reports nothing out of the ordinary.
I am currently running an older version of the drivers, and it seems to be doing OK. By coincidence, I just installed Modern Warfare 2 yesterday, and it ran a DirectX updater, probably the one you are talking about, and it did download and install some items. I had some graphical stutter in the game so far, but nothing that caused me to crash. I'll be playing World of Warcraft tonight, which is where I was crashing before, and we'll see how it does...
I have same card and my experience is the same as Malke's. Been running it since January with beta, RC, and now final version of '7 Ultimate x64 and never experienced the problem you are having. Currently running Nvidia driver 190.38 from their download site.
You might want to run Dxdiag.exe and see what it reports.
One other thing to consider is the power supply. It may be that your power supply is just borderline in meeting the needs of your board and components. It should be capable of providing at least 26 amps on the 12 volt rail. The fact that it may be rated, for example, 500 watts doesn't mean a lot by itself without actual amps supplied to the various rails.
You also might want to try re-seating the card in the slot. Also check power supply connector to card ensuring it is completely plugged in.
Just some things for you to consider - good luck.
I'm sorry to tell you this but I've had Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit running happily with the same video card since September and no problems whatsoever through various Nvidia driver updates. So it may be something else conflicting in your specific machine. Sometimes updating the sound card drivers can help. As for finding out what is going on, Windows 7 has some rather good troubleshooting tools built in.
Troubleshooting in Windows 7
If the problem exists only in certain games, then possibly this information about gaming and DirectX might help:
Win7 includes DirectX 11. However, it doesn't include all the components of previous versions of DirectX. This can cause some games not to work. The solution is to download and install the DirectX End-User Runtime Web Installer.
Download the Web Installer and run it. It will search for and install the components you need.
MS-MVP - Elephant Boy Computers - Don't Panic!
