Windows 7: nvidia 8800 GT driver issues

Having the same issue, pretty sure it is overheating.

I installed Windows 7 a couple weeks ago, and then last week, it started freezing up when I was playing WoW. After a few times, and being pretty sick of the issue, I tried to find a solution online, and saw similar visual patterns (lines and such on the screen and a lockup) from people reporting overheating issues.

Now here's the curious part. My case has 2 big fans and 3 smaller fans on it. It has great circulation. I used this same case and computer and video card for months with Vista x64, and then months again with Windows 7 RC. The configuration has not changed, but now I have to pop the side of the case off and point a fan into the case so it's blowing cool air in constantly. I ordered a card slot exhaust fan from Newegg, which should be coming soon via UPS, but I think these are just treating the symptom, overheating. The problem is that somehow something has changed when I switched over to Windows 7 Retail and these new drivers.

I have not tried installing olf Vista x64 drivers yet, but I am tempted to give it a go considering the issues may be some way the drivers are handling the card. Could they be running the card's clock speed too high, or the fan speed too low? Hard to say without a tweak tool, and sadly I can't find anything that works with Windows 7 yet.

But for now, the fan blowing air into the case is working well enough.

Rivatuner.

Hi gyuz,

I had the exact same problem (Windows 7 Pro 64 + 8800GTS). It all started a couple of days ago, and I noticed that when I played heavier games thy crashed. At the begining I was suspecting a bug in the game, but then I noticed the exact same problems when I was running other graphical-intensive software.

My first thought was overheat. And that is strange since I like to believe that I have a oversized cooling system in the case, with many fans, etc. But what the heck? I opened the window for extra cooling effect (winter, right?). It was slightly better but still it crashed. That led me to think I have a serious cooling problem.

However after investigations, the temp seemed not to be the root cause (rather a side effect). So I started looking at the drivers. My luck (or bad luck) was that I just performed a rather tricky SSD firmware upgrade and I thought it was giving me the errors.

So after days of pain, I decided to reinstall my Windows 7 completely. Did that, but immediately after installation, same problems. Ooops... so it wasn't because of old OS installation. Then, downloaded the latest nVidia drivers from the net (195.62 WHQL), did a Windows 7 reinstall, afterwards immediate driver upgrade and zap. Same thing.

At this point I was really upset. I opened the case, cleared all the dust, rearranged the cables for better air circulation, did a full RAM test, HDD test, etc. Nothing everything went OK.

One more try, who knows? Everything went fine, then Windows 7 asked me about the nvidia drivers automatic update, said OK, and ZAP!! Whooow... wait a minute, we're getting somewhere. Again Windows 7 completely unusable (not even managing to boot without a crash).

Again, reinstall. And said NO to the nVidia drivers update. Also I didn't install the latest nvidia drivers I had downloaded a couple of reinstalls before. And everything works as it should. Currently I have the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS version 8.15.11.8593 (that came with the Windows 7 installation kit) released on 14.05.2009.

I hope this helps someone!
And Marry Christmas!

new drivers does not always = good.

windows 7 introduced wddm 1.1 which has its own problems, if you want to try ruling that out grab yourself the 64bit 182.50 drivers as they are wddm 1.0.

Remember to properly uninstall the newer drivers first.

Yeah, just an update guys, my 8800 died. I bought a 9800 and it's working fine.

Still no idea what was going on with it. I'll be testing it in another machine sometime.

Hi guyz,

I know I've said in my previous post, that going back to the drivers provided by MS worked. Not for long. After a day or so it started to give me the same problems again.

So, like "garylisk", I've bought yesterday a 9800 to see if it helps, and it does. So it seems that the problem was my 8800 GPU after all. I still don't know why the 8800 suddenly died on me...