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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...
No! ...
Update: Had 4 crashes today while playing WoW, even at default video settings. I have tried changing to Windowed mode, which uses DirectDraw, and the same thing happened. I have tried old drivers and the latest beta drivers. I have run the DirectX web installer, and also a DirectX 9 redist package that installed just fine.
I have just finished completely disassembling, cleaning every component thoroughly, and reassembling the computer.
Here are the system specs for anyone who may wish to see them:
Hardware that is less than 2 years old:
ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe MoBo (Built-in NVidia NForce HD Sound and Gigabit Networking x2)
AMD Athlon x64 6000+ Dual Core Processor (3.0GHz) - Stock heatsink and fan (Warranty demanded)
4GB of dual-channel DDR2, Corsair
Corsair 550 Watt modular power supply, SLI certified with 2 seperate plugs for GPU power.
NVidia Geforce 8800 GT (Manufactured by Biostar)
PCI Slot "Cyclone Blower" exhaust fan under the video card
Western Digital WD32 SATA HDD (320GB, 3.0GB/s)
Sony Optiarc DVDRW (SATA)
Raidmax Smilodon gaming case (1 large frontal intake fan, 1 large rear exhaust fan, 2 small fans on left side, 1 small fan on right by drive bays.)
Hardware that is more than 2 years old:
Maxtor 6Y120P0 EIDE HDD (120GB)
Microsoft Natural Keyboard
Logitech LX3 Optical Mouse
HP 1825 17" LCD Monitor (Detects as Generic PnP monitor because my DVI cable is dead and I am using VGA)
I think that covers anything of any importance. All hardware is in good working order and is now completely clean and seated correctly. I even switched the RAM to the opposite slots just in case the slots they were in were no good.
However, I am still willing to bet I am going to get freezes just as before, because I know that nothing changed when I installed this operating system. Correlation does not prove causality, though, so it is good to rule out all other options, but I am pretty much out of ideas.
Malk: Sounds like the both of us have come to differing certainties based on our own perceptions and experiences.
Stereoscopic 3D service was running. I have disabled it as you suggested since there is no need to run it. I do not own those silly glasses.
I haven't tried to clean boot because the following processes are typically running in the background, and I doubt they would cause this kind of issue:
Those are the only things I can think of that could be culprits. The rest of the stuff running is all system processes.
Unreasonable? Rest assured that there is One Magic Answer. I am hoping to bring together people who have this problem and let us all brainstorm about what could be causing it, though it's pretty obvious when you're in our shoes what the one big change we all made recently to our systems was. (Hint: It's a big piece of software that cost a lot of money, so our sense of entitlement is justified.) We're not computer retards, most of us. We're hobbyists. We build our systems and know them well.
Finding the One Magic Answer is not that hard. Getting it recognized is another issue, because if our suspicions are correct, we can't fix it ourselves. Let's hope some of the simpler answers end up being the One Magic one.
Mattix: I am with you, NVidia and ASUS are my two big brands, and I would hate to leave one of them. I just wonder why things are not going as smoothly as they were with the release candidate?
The next experiement: Something I should have tried a while ago. A friend of mine and I will swap video cards, and we'll see who gets lock-ups. He is running Vista. In the highly unlikely event that the lockups start happening to him, it's the hardware and I am S.O.L. and will admit it and apologize for being so adamant in an incorrect stance. (Though I am confident that won't be the case.)
If I continue to get lockups, it is at the very least my system, and it makes it seem more likely to be a conflict within Win7. (Doubt it's the new drivers because old drivers do the same thing.)
The hilarious part would be if we BOTH end up running just fine, and neither of us have any lock ups. He has an NVidia Geforce 8600 I think, so I would think I would be accosted with the same problem, but if this happens, I will laugh quite heartily!
Once in a while I get a game lost also with same video card
Hi Garylisk:
Please check your BIOS. MSI can live auto-update online your BIOS/Drivers/ Utility/Firmware directly.
