NVidia drivers - how to choose?

[Linda]

Any advice on how to choose an Nvidia driver? I have
NVidia GEForce FX 5200 ultra, AsusP4S8X motherboard,
ACPI Bios revision 1004, 40gb hard drive, 512 mg RAM.
Curent NVidia driver is newest version 4.5.2.3 and I am
still crashing. Crashed using the driver version prior
to this one as well. I ran driver verifier specifically
to check the nvidia driver, and sure enough, I crashed
and crashed and crashed until I was finally able to
reboot in safe mode and turn off the driver verifier.
There are so many drivers, how do you choose? Is it just
a trial and error process? Any advice will be greatly
appreciated.

 

[Howard Brazee]

Any advice on how to choose an Nvidia driver? I have
NVidia GEForce FX 5200 ultra, AsusP4S8X motherboard,
ACPI Bios revision 1004, 40gb hard drive, 512 mg RAM.
Curent NVidia driver is newest version 4.5.2.3 and I am
still crashing. Crashed using the driver version prior
to this one as well. I ran driver verifier specifically
to check the nvidia driver, and sure enough, I crashed
and crashed and crashed until I was finally able to
reboot in safe mode and turn off the driver verifier.
There are so many drivers, how do you choose? Is it just
a trial and error process? Any advice will be greatly
appreciated.

You mean I can turn off a driver and get my computer to stop crashing? (I
crash daily or more because of my 45.23 driver)

 

[Linda]

Thanks for responding. We had this system built from
scratch, so there was no other video card installed prior
to this one. The individual who built this for us had it
for two weeks with no problems what so ever. We had it
for another two weeks and that is when the system began
crashing. We reinstalled xp and a week later it started
crashing again, and it keeps on happening. Posting to
the performance/maintenance newsgroup resulted in advice
to install a different driver. When I updated to the
current version, 4.5.23, I did not do an uninstall of the
previous Nvidia driver, I assumed the update would take
care of that. Should I roll back the driver, and try
that one again for a while and see what happens?
Because I ran the driver verifier, I am 99% certain it is
the NVidia drivers that are causing the problem. Any
advice is appreciated. I see from all these newsgroups
that I am not alone with NVidia problems. Thanks !
Linda

 

[Andre Vachon [MS]]

4.5.23 is the latest and greatest, most reliable driver.
If you are getting reproducible crashes with this driver, please send me the
dump files (located in %windir%\minidump) and I'll take a look (take out the
"online" part of the E-mail address).

-Andre

 

[linda]

Sorry, didn't mean to forget to answer you. I did
not "turn off" the nvvidia driver, what I turned off was
the driver verifier utility. If you disable (turn off)
the nvidia drive and you don't have another video card,
you won't be able to do very much on your
computer.

 

[Peter Hutchison]

Any advice on how to choose an Nvidia driver? I have
NVidia GEForce FX 5200 ultra, AsusP4S8X motherboard,
ACPI Bios revision 1004, 40gb hard drive, 512 mg RAM.
Curent NVidia driver is newest version 4.5.2.3 and I am
still crashing. Crashed using the driver version prior
to this one as well. I ran driver verifier specifically
to check the nvidia driver, and sure enough, I crashed
and crashed and crashed until I was finally able to
reboot in safe mode and turn off the driver verifier.
There are so many drivers, how do you choose? Is it just
a trial and error process? Any advice will be greatly
appreciated.

When updating drivers, you MUST follow the instructions supplied
with the driver or on the web site you got the driver from.
Never assume anything.
I always uninstall the current driver, reboot and then install the
new driver.

Peter Hutchison
Windows FAQ
http://www.pcguru.plus.com/