Nvidia 191.07 drivers causing outright hardware failure?

I have 2 systems that I update video card drivers once every 6 months, both are identical minus powersupply (P5Q-E with 260GTX). One machine is running everything stock (son's rig), the other overclocked (mine).
I updated the video drivers on my son's first and we decided to play Company of Heroes (as we do at least once or twice a month with no issue). About an hour in his machines crashes to the desktop with the "display driver not responding". No other changes were made to the machine. After playing COH for the last year without issue, I'm starting to believe there is something to these reports.
I installed the graphics driver like every other:
1) Uninstall via add/remove, reboot
2) Install new, reboot
Running Vista 64 on both machines. At least I have lifetime warranty, but just to add more fuel to the fire. I find it less likely this had nothing to do with the driver updates as we play pretty often and that was the only change made. His card is a 260GTX stock model and not overclocked, nor is his system.
 
Alright I'm downloading and installing 195.62

My card is unusually warm at 2D clocks (55C at 73% fan speed). Luckily I haven't really done any gaming since I installed the 191s, so hopefully everything is still in working order. I'm a bit hesitant to load up a game right now after reading all of this.
 
It has to be bad drivers. What should solve the issue is reverting back to the older drivers...and from what I've read, people still have issues.
 
My i7 rig wouldn't start a few weeks ago. I thought that this was due to the PSU blowing up. After reading through these posts I decided to go back and test everything that I'd taken out of my old i7.

The PSU is fine, the mobo is fine, memory is fine but the GPU is toast. It wasn't overclocked although the fan had been set at 100% for folding. It was right around Nov 22nd that this happened. Were the 191.07 drivers the latest ones out there at that time? I waited to install Win 7 and ended up getting the newest ones from NVidia's website just before then.

On the plus side, I have all sorts of extra parts for my next i7 rendering node! :D
 
191.07 release notes show october 5th as their release date.
I'm thinking I will stick with 182.xx until there is verification that the latest drivers are (a) stable and (b) non destructive.

Oh what the FUCK. They fucking removed nview display manager from the fucking drivers? Are you fucking kidding me? God damn you nvidia, damn you to fucking hell. Why the fuck they would make nview quadro only is beyond me. nview is one of the main reasons I have been buying nvidia cards over ATI for quite some time.
 
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Count me as another that had a card die on the 191.07's. My 8800GTX was rock solid for 2 years. Then a couple weeks back I started getting hardlocks playing Left4Dead2. After a couple of times it got to the point where I'd be connected a minute or two and then lock up. This persisted with about 4 other driver packages, and at about this point I started getting artifacting at the desktop. Now the system doesn't even POST with the 8800 in.

Swapped out an ATi card from work and now everything works fine. Waiting on a 5850 from Newegg, hopefully there has been no collateral damage.
 
I too have been having goofy issues (crashes mostly) tied to my video card. I thought it was just going bad and I didn't realize there was a mess of people having issues with 191.07 drivers. Those are the drivers that I am running.
 
The 191.07 and 195.62 drivers ran fine for me under Vista x64 but since I put Windows 7 on it I get BSODs at the boot screen. I rolled back to 185 and no BSODs at boot anymore.

nVidia doesn't seem to know wtf they're doing with drivers it seems.
 
I guess I'll give EVGA a call and see if they'll let me RMA my GTX 260 then.

Chromatik, thanks for starting this thread! Sharing info like this may have saved a bunch of cards for a lot of NVIDIA users!
 
Bop said:
The 191.07 and 195.62 drivers ran fine for me under Vista x64 but since I put Windows 7 on it I get BSODs at the boot screen. I rolled back to 185 and no BSODs at boot anymore.

nVidia doesn't seem to know wtf they're doing with drivers it seems.
Click to expand...
No problem with 195.62 and Win7 here, but i also have propper cooling on the cards.
Hell i even made them shut down/115 celsius without damage the other day due to experiment with pump and fans.

Finally correct downclocking to 2D that older crapdriver fail to do on all cards in TRISLI.
 
I think there is something to this'bad driver' issue.

I run an Intel q9450/3Gb ram/Maximus formula mobo/8800GTX and 9800GT.WinXPpro 32 bit....old video drivers=185.85

Everything is stock , no OC anywhere.Cooling is also not an issue.

I decided to upgrade to an Nvidia 260 , with the 8800GTX as the secondary card.As part of this process I also updated the drivers to 195.62.

Within a few mins , the card started artifacting , then the machine hardlocked and would not post after that...after removing the 260 , reinstalling the 8800GTX and reverting to the 185.85 drivers , the rig is fine again.

The 260 tested out fine with 185.85 drivers in a different rig.

I then reassembled the rig with the 260 and the 8800GTX.It works flawlessly with 185.85 drivers.

I then tried the 191.07 XP drivers.same result , artifacting, then hardlock.Machine will not post with 260 in.I have to remove the 260 , reinstall the 8800 with older drivers , then reinstall the 260.

------------

I've got the 260 and 8800 running just fine with the 185.85 drivers right now.

Whatever the issue is within the drivers , it's definitly leaving something behind that won't uninstall.....
 
I'm glad I just bought a netbook. I think my 275's are on their way out. I have to now manually ramp up my fans to 100% just to be able to scroll in IE. FYI, the OC in my sig on my cards are only when I benchmark. They are stock clocks for everyday use.

I just installed the 185's and I'm OK for now.
 
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I RMA my 9800 GX2 back to eVGA and they just shipped out a GTX 285.

how do they compare? Won't the SLI from the 9800 GX2 be faster? :confused:
 
garbage drivers I reverted back to 18xx these got me atleast 5 blue screens some games didn't boot up. Just absolute hell
 
Wow...........
I had similar issues.
My son's computer was rock solid and was running a GTX 260.
For Borderlands I installed a 191 driver version.
The next day the thing started crashing in every game randomly, and gave him driver failure messages.
I updated to the 195.62 and things are fine now.

In my everyday computer I have an 8800 GTX using the 191 version drivers on a RTM W7 OS.
I installed W7 Professional and last week started getting black screens after the POST.
The machine would not cold boot to the OS, it had to be hard restarted.

I finally updated to the 195.62 drivers and the machine has been problem free.
 
195's was what started the problem for me. (winXP pro 32 bit)

I just tried the CUDA 190.'s

Total fail , artifacting then hardlock.

The 260 will not reset at this point.......It artifacts on bios now even in a different rig.

Considering I've reversed this condition twice and gone back to 185's , it's pretty obvious the VGA bios is being affected.........

My 260 brick is going in for rma again...
 
Well, I caught this thread on the tail end of an RMA. A 9800GT should be arriving in tomorrow from EVGA, after my rock-solid 8800GT randomly stopped running 3D apps...after what I thought was an innocuous driver upgrade. Good to know that it's not just me. This has also strengthened my resolve to get a 5850 once stock is available...really, bad or unstable drivers are one thing..but drivers that bork cards are another.
 
Yep.

Epic fail.

I actually managed to reproduce the issue twice before the card died for good.

My new card is enroute.

Since Nvidia/eVGA seem unwilling to confirm / deny anything , eVGA can have thier card back.Thanks for the new one.I suggest sending the bill to Nvidia.

:p

p.s. I'm a computer professional.This issue is not my fault....don't tell me it's a bad install....I don't OC , cooling is not an issue etc/etc....It's reproducable , and sometimes irrevocable.

Nice work on those drivers.

Thanks again for the free replacement.

:D
 
Guess what.

Yep! I'm here to report two more deaths as a result of the faulty drivers.

My 8800GTS 640MB and my sister's 8800GT 512 both died within a day of one another after updating to the 19x.xx drivers.

It was a deterioration process, starting with screen freezes/artifacts every so often, to BSODs, to outright failures on the desktop, not even in any games.

I wrote EVGA, pleading for them to help me. I had to elevate the problem to a higher-up, but I doubt it's going anywhere. As for my sister, well, she might still be under warranty.

If EVGA doesn't help me, God help nVidia for the wrath I'm about to incur.
 
I've been having screen freeze issues since I built this PC last month. They've been getting more frequent and they used to only be in-game. Now I'm getting them in Win7. Actually happened today as I was on nvidia's site serching for old drivers.

No errors, just frozen on the screen like a picture, only way out is to power cycle.
EVGA GTX-275 running the 19x drivers since the build.

Just grabbed the 186's, I hope I'm not too late...
 
Have 2 GTX 260s with these drivers and running fine for good amount of time..hm
 
Hamstar said:
Guess what.

Yep! I'm here to report two more deaths as a result of the faulty drivers.

My 8800GTS 640MB and my sister's 8800GT 512 both died within a day of one another after updating to the 19x.xx drivers.

It was a deterioration process, starting with screen freezes/artifacts every so often, to BSODs, to outright failures on the desktop, not even in any games.

I wrote EVGA, pleading for them to help me. I had to elevate the problem to a higher-up, but I doubt it's going anywhere. As for my sister, well, she might still be under warranty.

If EVGA doesn't help me, God help nVidia for the wrath I'm about to incur.
Click to expand...

Good news; EVGA, at full cost to them, has honored my request for a RMA on my out-of-warranty card. At first, they didn't want to help, but I escalated the problem to the director of marketing, and someone came through for me.

This goes to show: 1. buy from EVGA! and 2. escalate if the first request for help is a no!
 
Good to hear.

My 260's been replaced by eVGA too.It's been running perfectly on the 185.85's for a week now....

--------

FRAGizm said:
Have 2 GTX 260s with these drivers and running fine for good amount of time..hm
Click to expand...

Yep.I've got a rig here running 191's just fine...it doesn't happen with every setup.

-----

I'd love to test my theory that flashing the VGA bios on these bricked cards will fix the problem , but everyone I know has just RMA'd the cards.....
 
I'm running Win XP 32-bit and my card died one day after updating to the 195.81 drivers. My RMA return is on its way back now. Was running a GTX 8800 OC2.
 
I got an NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 off a fellow student the other day, and I'm not sure if it crashed in Left 4 Dead because of the 195.62's or not. Hell, I'm not even sure if it crashed because of the 191.07's I had installed prior to the 195.62's (I ran it on 191.07 briefly before upgrading to 195.62). I thought it was heat but now I'm not so sure.

Interestingly, my 9800 GT, pre-upgrade to the GX2, had been running for weeks on 191.07 without any apparent problems. I say *apparent*, though. This thread's got me paranoid. Yesterday, I encountered a Driver Recovery message on driver 185.85 in the NVIDIA "Medusa" Demo. This NEVER happened on my 9800 GT. On the other hand someone out there reported that 185.85 has issues with 9800GX2's?

Should I attempt an RMA of the card, to be on the safe side?
 
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My 9800 GX2 used to crash in L4D a lot before swapping drivers...

does yours crash in other games?

p.s. make sure ur running your fan at 80% or faster... the 9800gx2 is a hot bitch
 
Here is a follow-up in regards to my sons machine with dual 8800GTs (both factory overclocked)...

My sons machine was running a Athlon x2 5400+ @ 3.2GHz, 4gb DDR2 800 running at 1000 (5-5-5-18), on a Foxconn 590SLI motherboard with a single hard drive and a DVD burner and dual 8800GT 512mb video cards in SLI. This was being powered by a Dynex 500w power supply that came with the Dynex case I used for my sons build.

It ran all 18x and 19x (including 191s and 195s) just find without incident. He runs Crysis, Sacred 2, C&C: Red Alert and the Tiberium Wars series, Devil May Cry 4, etc... The system ran perfectly fine for the past year without as much as a lockup.

About a week ago, running 195.xx drivers, his system started locking up while in low-GPU powered games such as Red Alert. Heavier GPU useage games were immediate lockups.

I tried everything to *fix* the situation, such as no overclocking on anything, stock voltages everywhere, etc... I ended up pulling one of his 8800GTs and it ran perfectly fine with one GPU. Perfomance sucked, but it ran. I could even overclock the system back to previous specs, just with one card.

So, today I received in a 1000w OCZ ProXStream power supply and decided to use his system to test it out. System ran fine with one GPU, so I put in the second 8800GT, reconfigured it for SLI operation and it runs fine as well. Crysis runs great, no lockups.

I ended up putting the 1000w in my server and taking the BFG ES-800 I had in there in my sons machine and he is now running perfectly fine.

Now, as I stated before I have no doubt the newer drivers stress the cards more, which means they draw more power. In my case it was enough to weaken a marginal power supply to the point it is insufficient to power dual cards anymore.

Key point here is to verify your power supply is up to the task before assuming you need an RMA for a card that may be just fine.
 
@Lamont, That is strange because I could run my 9800 GT with a 400W with a system similar to @dbphelps. So unless you have some insane other components in there I don't see how it'd be a power issue unless the power supply itself is defective. Corsair has generously offered to RMA my power supply, so I may accept their offer.

Shouldn't a Corsair TX850W be able to handle a 9800 GX2, let alone a 9800 GT?

@Hooligan
Your 9800 GX2 used to crash in L4D a lot before swapping drivers...but which drivers did you have and which did you switch to? You switched to 182's right? I've experienced one crash in the Medusa Demo, no more. And yeah, I'm running my fan at 100% always. 70C at idle didn't sit well with me.
 
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i think i've just fallin victim to this... my 8800gts 640mb has been running strong for almost 2 years now.

about a month ago i installed w7 x64 and installed the 191.07 drivers. i'd get the occasional game freeze and what not, but i'd just hard restart and it was fine so i didnt think much of it. well, today my game froze then blue screened with a .dll error that related to nvidia. when i turned my computer back on there was artifacting all over the place, jumbled up letters and numbers on the post screens and windows would not start.

tested on a friends machine and the same thing was going on... i hope i can RMA this thing. i really didnt want to buy a new card yet.
 
GregBFM said:
@Lamont, That is strange because I could run my 9800 GT with a 400W with a system similar to @dbphelps. So unless you have some insane other components in there I don't see how it'd be a power issue unless the power supply itself is defective. Corsair has generously offered to RMA my power supply, so I may accept their
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Yeah, I don't think I will be able to RMA anything. Learned a $500 lesson from BFG. Everything was bought in the US, and roundtrip for anything will be 30 days if I am lucky. So I just buy a new part from a national brand(Owl) or a company here in Japan.

So a new PSU it is. Before I posted this issue, I was looking at 850w, I am just gonna go straight to 1000w.
 
I just replaced my psu to a Corsair 1000HX modular and after installing the 195 series driver I get flickering in SLI like a burnt out light bulb on my screen when a game starts! Going back to 191.07 remedies the situation. So I vote that sometimes its bad driver...
 
I went back to drivers in the 18X.XX series. It did not go away.
 
ya. reverting to past drivers / reformatting didn't work for me. after I rma'd my 9800gx2 I got a GTX285 and been running it for a week. no problems so far in WoW / HoN / TF2.

The fan has a higher pitched sound, but I'd rather have a card that WORKS.

Obviously I am not going anywhere near 19x. drivers... been running 186
 
I called BFG last night about my replacement 8800 GTX OC2 card failing soon after installation and they told me that the first thing that might be causing the issue was the PSU since I was getting almost the exact same error. Artifacts on POST and fail to boot windows, or at least display it. However, the first card would not even send a signal to the display as the monitor would go into standby during power-up. After a re-seat the card was displaying the POST with artifacts and many of the letters were random symbols. The second card did not give me the random letter, just the artifacts if the background. They recommended I try a different PSU since I verified that the PCI-e slot was functioning properly with a 7600 GT. So last night I got a new Antec 750w unit. plugged it into the working config and it booted just fine. Swapped out to the 8800 and no change in the fault. After a quick call with a really short wait time. HINT: if you call in past 11:00 pm pst there is virtually no wait time. At least last night there wasn't. So I asked the rep what else could possibly be causing this and he said it was most likely the VRAM. Also, I asked about the new drivers causing the crash and he said that drivers rarely cause hardware failure and that if it was my PSU that it would have most likely burned out my working 7600 by now. Would an underpowered rig cause damage to a video card in that way? I would figure that the only possibility would be a random crash now and then remedied my a quick reboot or at most an underpowered heat sink fan, causing overheating of the unit, but I literally plugged the card in, powered up, and attempted to run GPU-z to check my temps. It crashed on the "windows pop-up" asking me if I wanted to run the program. It didn't even have time to launch before it froze up. I'm just worried that his fault will continue with future cards :(.
 
I can confirm this, 195.62_desktop_win7_winvista_64bit_english_whql drivers

Run them about 1 week on my XFX GF 8600 GT, and the card it dead, fan works but its totally dead and it wont even boot up, show anything at all.

The card run fine for like 2 years lol, and it ministerially die after the driver update.

Was using 18x drivers before the update.
 
Lamont said:
I went back to drivers in the 18X.XX series. It did not go away.
Click to expand...

Hooligan said:
ya. reverting to past drivers / reformatting didn't work for me.
Click to expand...


Yea , a lot of the time it does'nt work from what I'm seeing.

I got really lucky in the fact that I was actually able to revert the drivers twice before my card died.I was able to test out the issue a bit , so I know it's not "a bad PSU" or "cards are too hot" or "Vram is bad"........I know for a fact it's the drivers.I tested the card for 2 days at 100% load after the first driver reversion , it and the rig were totally stable...same thing after the second driver reversion.....rig tested out totally fine. The third time ( 190.38 drivers) was the last straw apparently , card died totally.

ssnake323 said:
I asked about the new drivers causing the crash and he said that drivers rarely cause hardware failure
Click to expand...

I've seen this quoted quite a bit.Here's the thing tho , you need to read between the lines.

Yes , generally drivers will not cause physical hardware failure.

This doesn't mean drivers can't totally corrupt the BIOS of the video card rendering it effectively dead.

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This is the whole issue as far as I can tell.Something in the 19x.xx series drivers is corrupting the VGA bios.This is why the card artifacts in bios/post , and it's also why driver reversions won't always work.

In the end , my 260 would not allow any drivers to install.

:rolleyes:
 
Uh oh. This thread has me a bit paranoid. I've been on 191.07 drivers since late October when I installed Windows 7 with my 8800 GTX. I have yet to encounter any of the symptoms mentioned, but now I'm afraid that my card as been "infected" and will meet an untimely end soon. O_O

EDIT: This computer has been on pretty much all the time since then, so it's gotten plenty of use. Temps seem to be as normal as ever. No significant warning signs as of yet, but I better prepare for a replacement if it happens...
 
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I'm sure a lot of people also have installed these drivers and have yet to see any symptoms, but my suggestion is you should revert drivers ASAP to be safe.
 
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