Vista Tutorial - New nvidia drivers [178.13] messed up my system

Yesterday, my friend told me that nVidia have released new ForceWare for Vista [178.13], so I went ahead and downloaded it.

Before installing, I removed my old ForceWare from "Programs and Features" and rebooted; then installed the new drivers and after rebooting found that they were unstable.

After installing 178.13, I had problems with Aero; constant flashes and desktop freezing problems, so I disabled Aero. Thinking that I'll tackle the problem later, I went ahead to watch a movie and then the driver crashed and recovered [popup in taskbar: display driver nvlddmkm {or whatever, I don't remember now} stopped responding and recovered successfully]. This began to happen frequently while playing the movie, so I quit the media player and promptly uninstalled the new drivers as before and went back to the old 175.19 which were rock solid for me!

This afternoon, when I sat down to watch a VCD movie, I noticed that there were several graphical glitches and there was a left clip where there was a mirror effect shown in screenshot below in yellow rectangle:



Click here for image.


The glitches go away when I play it in anything other than WMP11 and this glitch is affecting play back of VCD streams ONLY. Although other players don't show glitches, the left clip mirror effect is shown throughout the system whenever I play VCD streams [both .DAT and .MPEG].

Steps I have taken: 1. Uninstall any and all CODEC packs
2. Uninstall nvidia ForceWare 175.19
3. Re-install nvidia Forceware 175.19
The problem still remains. I used to use Nasty File Remover [aka NFR] in XP to completely flush out old uninstalled drivers before installing new drivers. Is there any new utility which can do the same for vista?
The only solution I can see is to completely flush out nVidia's drivers from my system so that I can start anew.

Please help me! Any and all help is appreciated! Thank You!

P.S.: I have had this other problem with nVidia's Forceware 178.13 which I have posted here: nVidia Desktop color profile does not load after updating to 178.13

Compleatly remove the drivers, go into device manager and remove the device. Download the 169 version (which is known to be stable) or have the drivers disk that came with your card handy.
When you reset your machine it will tell you it has found new hardware and install the drivers for your card.

Has anyone else experienced any problems with the new drivers? I've downloaded them but haven't installed them yet.

Nope my system is good nothin messed up with the new drivers.

Hello all.

I removed 175.19 with device manager and installed 178.13 and I'm having no problems at all!















Later Ted

Uninstalled the old physx drivers, then the video drivers... installed the new ones, could not be happier.

I uninstalled my old driver and then installed the new 178.13 without a problem. It's ok on my machine.

I don't know how to describe what fixed this problem, cause I really don't know!

ALSO SEE: Can't open Resource monitor

After my mess up with Vista, I started using XP which was on 163.75 and guess what! The same instability problems started to appear!

So, it was crystal clear that this was a hardware mess up. I shut down my PC, tried to do a little dust sucking and blowing with the vacuum cleaner, remover and cleaned my 6600, RAM and put all stuff back.

Then, I started XP and after about an hour of usage everything was pretty normal. So, I switched over to Vista to find that the problem was still there, only this time there was no BSOD or stuff like that which could make my system crawl. It was just "Display driver has stopped responding and recovered successfully" balloon messages.

Next, I uninstalled the affected driver and installed 175.19 but this time through the device manager method. Everything went fine and in working condition.
Incidently, I noticed that Windows Update had an optional GeForce 6600 driver update which I selected to install. It was approx. 55 MB download and after installing, voila!
I was on 178.13, the newest driver with all my color settings copied over and rock solid reliability!

Everything is fine now, just one grudge that Vista chose to drop my Experience index from 4.0 to 3.8 and that too in Gaming grpahics!

I guess, my card had either become loose or the dust might have played a part. It could even be a corrupt installation file! Whatever it was, this has certainly added to my experience!

Thanks for all the help!

Hello Dragor, good to see you found a solution!

















Later Ted

I always tend to use the newest posted drivers on Guru3d...they have yet to cause any instability or corruption on my rig, and there's a newer 178.15 out now, try that.