Software and Applications

[Egglick]

NVidia's new 285.62 drivers are garbage and should be avoided.  I updated last night, and within 24hrs I've had at least three (3) occasions where the screen randomly went black, and then came back with a "The display driver has stopped responding and successfully recovered" message.  I've never seen that happen before, and no other hardware or software changes were made.

No question it's the drivers.

[jwhx]

Bummer. I was always lazy when it came to updating my nvidia card drivers. Guess I got lucky and never ran into problems when I did get around to tossing in new ones. I'm much better about it now with ATI/AMD as it loves reminding me there's new ones.

[JethroBodine]

That's odd.

I've been using these for almost a month, at OpenGL (playing Rage) Direct 3d (playing DukeNuke'm Forever), gaming at 57X10 in 3d and not, using SLi. Have also played some JC2, Batman AA, UT2004, and AvP.

My son has played others, and in that month completed Duke Nuke'm and Rage.

I did have one crash/memory dump that said it was a driver error, but given the variety of gaming we've done and relative rarity of my hardware, I don't know that I can join you in proclaiming the drivers "suck" and should be avoided.

I'd note my one crash was in Rage, which isn't exactly known for "it just works" type experience on the PC.

[Egglick]

So far I've noticed:

• I haven't had a driver crash during a game.
• They seem to occur roughly within 10 minutes of bringing the computer out of standby, or a fresh boot.

And again, I never had this issue before installing these particular drivers, and nothing else was changed on the system.

[sqitso]

Egg... Here is a method that I have to do with every nvidia driver.. This WILL fix the issue. I have no idea what it does.. but it makes all of the releases solid. REMEMBER.. if you do this.. you will have to redo the procedure everytime you upgrade drivers. I even made a youtube video on this technique for people who have the same issue. Also remember the registry structure for everyone is a little different so there may be more than one 0000 folder.. but just look for the one that has driver into in it.. it will be obvious.. will say stuff like Nvidia driver versions and other stuff in the threads.

Open regedit

HKLOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/Current_Control_set/Control/Video

Open first folder then 0000 "firstfolder/0000"

go to start/regedit/HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control/Video/{19317A2­F-F50A-46B0-A6BO-A68A-F9BE0880DBOC}/0000 (In
the folder video folder you must have 6 folder like this, i'ts not important if you have different Folder with big name) you need
folder 0000 ..! in that folder you must create 4 REG_DWORD files... ****Look for the 0000 folder with driver info in it****
(if you have 32 bit windows create 32 bit REG_DWORD, If you have 64 bit than Create 64 bit REG_Dword...
so lets create....

BE SURE THIS FOLDER IS THE ONE WITH THE DRIVER VERSION

1---- PerfLevelSrc With value 3322

2---- PowerMizerEnable With value 0
3----- PowermizerLevel With Value 1
4------ PowermizerLevelAC With Value 1
Done... The problem fixed...

I could export a REG file with all that info in it from my system for you.. but I don't know if it will work with someone else's machine.

Here is a pic of my registry with the added dwords.. Notice that there may be several long file names under VIDEO and each will have a 0000 folder. You need to find the 0000 folder with the hardware and driver information in it. There will only be ONE 0000 folder that will have driver and hardware infor in it.  I have higlighted the hardware info at the top of the list to give you an idea what to look for.

[JethroBodine]

Holy crap! I would join the young man on his PS3 and XBox if I had to do that procedure to install drivers Sqitso.

[Egglick]

Yeah.....It doesn't look terribly difficult, but I'm gonna hold off on that unless the issue becomes unbearable.  I generally don't like making those sorts of changes unless I fully understand everything I'm doing and why it has to be done.  Hopefully NVidia issues a new set of drivers soon with the issue corrected.

Thanks for the info though.  I'll keep a mental log of this.

[sqitso]

Well.. Let me say this. I was using an ATI card until my birthday in May.. From day one I kept getting driver not responding.. even doing the simplist things.. like watching youtube and skype video at the same time. I even returned that 560ti for another fearing it was defective. Same problems occured.. no matter what driver. Then I discovered this fix.. which is very easy to do.. it just looks hard. That was in May. I have only received the error message since IF I forget to apply this fix after a driver update.. So basically since May I have never had a driver stopped responding error as long as this fix is applied.

[Egglick]

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sqitso wrote:

Well.. Let me say this. I was using an ATI card until my birthday in May.. From day one I kept getting driver not responding.. even doing the simplist things.. like watching youtube and skype video at the same time. I even returned that 560ti for another fearing it was defective. Same problems occured.. no matter what driver. Then I discovered this fix.. which is very easy to do.. it just looks hard. That was in May. I have only received the error message since IF I forget to apply this fix after a driver update.. So basically since May I have never had a driver stopped responding error as long as this fix is applied.

---

Yeah.  I used ATI for several years too.  From the 9800 Pro through the 4850 I only had major issues with one (1) driver release out of countless. My current NVidia problem doesn't seem to be quite as serious as yours was.  In roughly 2 weeks I've probably had about 10 occurances, and never during a game.  I haven't had any issues with previous NVidia drivers up until this point (I've had the card about 1.5yrs), so I'm hopeful that the issue will be resolved next release.

[sqitso]

Well what gets me.. is these registry intries obviously have something to do with what is causing the error no matter how often or not it occurs. A little research a you see tons of people using this fix. Why aren't these entries even entered in the new driver codes? It's easy enough to make them einert and offer you the option to enable them in the driver. No one that uses the fix has ever complained about performance or stability issues.. so what exactly do they do and why do they fix something that is broken?

[Shrink223]

I'm going to try this and let you know what happens.  

[jacobvandy]

Well, there had been new drivers released since this thread was posted (285.79), but now they're up to 290.36:

http://www.geforce.com/News/articles/nvidia-geforce-290-36-beta-drivers-released

[snagged]

I'm having some problems with updating my drivers. I just got the new NFS game The Run and can't play the game without updating my drivers to the 285.62. Whenever I try and install it though I get an error that says, "The NVIDIA graphics driver is not compatible with this version of Windows. The graphics driver could not find compatible graphics hardware." I have a E-Geforce 8800 GT.

It won't let me play the game without updating the drivers, how does one get around this or fix it?

[ICDP]

What version of Windows are you running?
Did you download the drivers, or is this something included with the game?
It sounds like you've got the install file for the wrong OS.

[snagged]

I have 64 bit Windows Vista (Home Premium). I downloaded the drivers from http://www.geforce.com

Ohhhhh, I got the drivers for the 32 bit and not 64 bit version so you were right on the money. Successfully installing the right drivers now. Thanks for the help, much appreciated.

[Egglick]

Still waiting for them to update these trash drivers.  It figures that they'd decide to sit on this release for going on 4 months now.

[jacobvandy]

Have you tried the 290.53 drivers? They have to call them beta because they're not WHQL-certified, but they're the last release, from December 21st.

[sqitso]

lol.. I'm telling you.. My fix will work. I just installed the latest drivers and applied my 4 registry entries and they are rock solid. Takes less than a minute.

[Egglick]

I know, I just keep thinking they're going to release new drivers any day now, then nothing happens.  I guess I wasn't paying attention too close, but I thought NVidia released more often than once every 4 months.

[ZeroGuardian]

Nvidia does typically release more often then this. However, I imagine they haven't had a whole lot of problems with the current drivers so they probably don't have a whole lot of insentive to release new drivers until their new GPUs come out in the next month or two.

[sqitso]

I will be honest with you. When I switched to nvidia from ATI and was having sooo many problems, I searched desperately for an answer. That is how I cam across my fix. After I found out how much better everything was from just 4 small registry entries I did email nvidia support on 2 seperate occasions. The first was when I discovered the fix.. the second was in one of their beta feedback things. I have told nvidia twice that my entries make shit work and would like and explination as to exactly what they fix.. or why nvidia isn't doing whatever the fix is doing in their current drivers.. or at least why similarly reliable fixes are not being implemented in every single driver they release. Never heard anything from them. Don't forget.. no matter what driver I use from nvidia.. sooner or later they will always fail. So installing my fix has pretty much become just part of the driver install process. 

[Synchronous Failure]

New beta drivers are out.

[mikegonzalez2k]

This is what that registry change is actually doing, in recent Nvidia drivers some moron got the bright idea to develop a Power Saving feature called PowerMizer.  Effectively this feature lowers the core clock of the GPU to decrease power consumption.  As a result games and other high end applications will choke on performance.

Here is what each of the registry strings actually do

PowerMizerEnable=1

1 is on, 0 is off, so setting it to 0 will disable PowerMizer

PerfLevelsrc=0x2222

This is the performance strategy: 

2222 is the code for Maximum Frequency

3322 is the code for Fixed frequency

3333 is the code for Adaptive frequency

This defines how the AC usage, is it kept steady, or does it change

For max performance you want to use max frequency 2222

PowerMizerDefault=0x3

This code defines the default level of performance for battery

Vales range from 1 to 3

1 = High

2 = Medium

3 = Low

PowerMizerDefaultAC=0x3

This code defines the default level of performance for battery when ur connected to AC.

In other words, this power setting is used when your laptop is plugged in to an outlet.

When you are running off battery, the one above is used.

So on battery might be kept low, while on AC keep it on high.

In your case, you have 1,1 so its on high whether the computer is plugged in or not.

None of these settings matter though because you have PowerMizerEnable=0

This is disabling the power saving features all together, which is probably the best move if you dont care about power, and want maximum performance.

[sqitso]

Ahh good.. Glad someone explained. So all my fix does is turns off power management for the video card. Makes sense as to why they become stable after the fix. Good stuff. There you go guys. You can see my shit is safe.

[jwhx]

What the hell kind of world do we live in when some random guy's first post is helpful and full of great information?

[sqitso]

Hey that's pretty cool.. because if you do a search for this problem you will not find very many straight answers.. it took me quite a while. The fact that this guy took the time to make an account just to fill in the information that we needed is very cool indeed.

Oh and to answer the couple of emails and let every know. I have tried making .reg files.. by exporting the entries for easy merger if people wanted to try the fix.. but it doesn't work. For some reason every single driver creates a completely new line of registry entries. If you have updated your drivers more than once and look at the registry you will see several /0000 folders.. several from each driver version. It would be nice if I didn't have to do it manually, but that doesn't seem to work.

another FYI... ALL the drivers crash in Windows 8 regardless of reg entries. Windows 8 is a steaming pile right now. Though it does boot in less than 9 seconds on a 5 year old laptop with only 1.5gb of ram.

[SoulJack]

---

mikegonzalez2k wrote:

This is what that registry change is actually doing, in recent Nvidia drivers some moron got the bright idea to develop a Power Saving feature called PowerMizer.  Effectively this feature lowers the core clock of the GPU to decrease power consumption.  As a result games and other high end applications will choke on performance.

Here is what each of the registry strings actually do

PowerMizerEnable=1

1 is on, 0 is off, so setting it to 0 will disable PowerMizer

PerfLevelsrc=0x2222

This is the performance strategy: 

2222 is the code for Maximum Frequency

3322 is the code for Fixed frequency

3333 is the code for Adaptive frequency

This defines how the AC usage, is it kept steady, or does it change

For max performance you want to use max frequency 2222

PowerMizerDefault=0x3

This code defines the default level of performance for battery

Vales range from 1 to 3

1 = High

2 = Medium

3 = Low

PowerMizerDefaultAC=0x3

This code defines the default level of performance for battery when ur connected to AC.

In other words, this power setting is used when your laptop is plugged in to an outlet.

When you are running off battery, the one above is used.

So on battery might be kept low, while on AC keep it on high.

In your case, you have 1,1 so its on high whether the computer is plugged in or not.

None of these settings matter though because you have PowerMizerEnable=0

This is disabling the power saving features all together, which is probably the best move if you dont care about power, and want maximum performance.

---

Same TDR issue...

Can this be applied to a desktop just the same way? If so do I apply all four of those files or just the 1st one since there is no Batter involved?

Thanx much

I'm using Win 7 64bit

GTX 560 Ti

[SoulJack]

---

sqitso wrote:

Egg... Here is a method that I have to do with every nvidia driver.. This WILL fix the issue. I have no idea what it does.. but it makes all of the releases solid. REMEMBER.. if you do this.. you will have to redo the procedure everytime you upgrade drivers. I even made a youtube video on this technique for people who have the same issue. Also remember the registry structure for everyone is a little different so there may be more than one 0000 folder.. but just look for the one that has driver into in it.. it will be obvious.. will say stuff like Nvidia driver versions and other stuff in the threads.

Open regedit

HKLOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/Current_Control_set/Control/Video

Open first folder then 0000 "firstfolder/0000"

go to start/regedit/HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control/Video/{19317A2­F-F50A-46B0-A6BO-A68A-F9BE0880DBOC}/0000 (In
the folder video folder you must have 6 folder like this, i'ts not important if you have different Folder with big name) you need
folder 0000 ..! in that folder you must create 4 REG_DWORD files... ****Look for the 0000 folder with driver info in it****
(if you have 32 bit windows create 32 bit REG_DWORD, If you have 64 bit than Create 64 bit REG_Dword...
so lets create....

BE SURE THIS FOLDER IS THE ONE WITH THE DRIVER VERSION

1---- PerfLevelSrc With value 3322

2---- PowerMizerEnable With value 0
3----- PowermizerLevel With Value 1
4------ PowermizerLevelAC With Value 1
Done... The problem fixed...

I could export a REG file with all that info in it from my system for you.. but I don't know if it will work with someone else's machine.

Here is a pic of my registry with the added dwords.. Notice that there may be several long file names under VIDEO and each will have a 0000 folder. You need to find the 0000 folder with the hardware and driver information in it. There will only be ONE 0000 folder that will have driver and hardware infor in it.  I have higlighted the hardware info at the top of the list to give you an idea what to look for.

---

Same TDR issue...

Can this be applied to a desktop just the same way? If so do I apply all four of those files or just the 1st one since there is no Batter involved?

Thanx much

I'm using Win 7 64bit

GTX 560 Ti

[sqitso]

---

SoulJack wrote:

---

sqitso wrote:

Egg... Here is a method that I have to do with every nvidia driver.. This WILL fix the issue. I have no idea what it does.. but it makes all of the releases solid. REMEMBER.. if you do this.. you will have to redo the procedure everytime you upgrade drivers. I even made a youtube video on this technique for people who have the same issue. Also remember the registry structure for everyone is a little different so there may be more than one 0000 folder.. but just look for the one that has driver into in it.. it will be obvious.. will say stuff like Nvidia driver versions and other stuff in the threads.

Open regedit

HKLOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/Current_Control_set/Control/Video

Open first folder then 0000 "firstfolder/0000"

go to start/regedit/HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control/Video/{19317A2­F-F50A-46B0-A6BO-A68A-F9BE0880DBOC}/0000 (In
the folder video folder you must have 6 folder like this, i'ts not important if you have different Folder with big name) you need
folder 0000 ..! in that folder you must create 4 REG_DWORD files... ****Look for the 0000 folder with driver info in it****
(if you have 32 bit windows create 32 bit REG_DWORD, If you have 64 bit than Create 64 bit REG_Dword...
so lets create....

BE SURE THIS FOLDER IS THE ONE WITH THE DRIVER VERSION

1---- PerfLevelSrc With value 3322

2---- PowerMizerEnable With value 0
3----- PowermizerLevel With Value 1
4------ PowermizerLevelAC With Value 1
Done... The problem fixed...

I could export a REG file with all that info in it from my system for you.. but I don't know if it will work with someone else's machine.

Here is a pic of my registry with the added dwords.. Notice that there may be several long file names under VIDEO and each will have a 0000 folder. You need to find the 0000 folder with the hardware and driver information in it. There will only be ONE 0000 folder that will have driver and hardware infor in it.  I have higlighted the hardware info at the top of the list to give you an idea what to look for.

---

Same TDR issue...

Can this be applied to a desktop just the same way? If so do I apply all four of those files or just the 1st one since there is no Batter involved?

Thanx much

I'm using Win 7 64bit

GTX 560 Ti

---

Not really sure if you can do just the one. I always apply all four entries and never have any problems. I guess you could play with it if you want.. but I make it a point to not screw with the registry too much

[SoulJack]

So the reg. changes referring to battery control aren't an issue when applied to a desktop ?

This is important since I don't weant the pigs to get me on all fronts...

[sqitso]

I dont really know for sure. My answer would normally be.. as long as it's a nvidia card it should work.. but keep in mind that latops have power management features programed in the bios that you have no control over. Example.. there may be a hard setting in the bios to keep a video card from ever going over a certail voltage, or speed for temp reasons. There may be power management hard coded to keep the laptop from burning up. So just keep that in mind on laptops.

[Egglick]

Probably worth mentioning that I haven't had a single driver crash with 295.73 so far.

[sqitso]

---

Egglick wrote:

Probably worth mentioning that I haven't had a single driver crash with 295.73 so far.

---

I had high hopes as with the previous drivers but I wound up having to fix these too. Seems to be a problem if I am watching youtube and surfng the net at the same time... I am currently using the 296.10 WHQL drivers but I am willing to bet eventually they will crash

[sqitso]

Well as was explained in earlier posts my registry fix is pretty much power management adjustments. Asking around other places and talking to some of my old work mates from the day.. This looks like card specific issues.. not driver problems. If the cards are not made to the same specs that the drivers are looking for exactly.. you get a crash. My cards are PNY cards.. crash ever version. The zotac that I have in another box never crashes. Now I havent moved that card to this box because I'm lazy.. but I do use it quite a bit and it never has the problem.