nVidia driver failure from Windows Update! HELP!

[JackOfSpades]

This occured just hours after I first registered for this website.

I have had some problems with updating the drivers for my EVGA GTX 460 SE 1GB and it has been giving me h3ll about it.

Innocently, just hours after I registered for this site, I was going to do a Windows update as I hadn't yet done one in weeks and decided to do the optional update on Windows 7 Pro for a new nVidia driver as I do with everything.

When I downloaded it, installed, then restarted, my computer started to act kind of funny. For the most part it was pristine, but it started and continues to operate funny with the visual display...

1) During the second Windows loading screen, the one after the glowing Windows logo, the screen quickly flickers to black and back to the screen during the process. It does this sometimes while I'm navigating in Windows as well using some programs albeit somewhat infrequently.

2) The driver update screwed up my desktop display immensely as it is now. When I originally installed the nVidia driver from the EVGA cards software CD, I noticed the picture quality and resolution jumped up immensely and added higher resolutions to my desktop settings. Icons got immensely smaller, more windows with smaller text could fit on the screen, the cursor was half the size about, and my start menu and bar with it's icons, shrunk down a bit smaller too. That was the healthy behavior. Now when I did this Windows Update for the nVidia display driver it messed everything up to what it is now. Everything is blown up in size. And when I tried to uninstall all the nVidia software, restarting, and then installing it again using the latest driver download off of nVidia's website, the same stuff. I can see the uninstallation of the driver causes it to revert to I take it some default Windows visual driver lowering the max desktop resolutions and that reinstalling the driver off of the website does indeed add the higher resolutions and the visual appearance does change where the cursor, icons, etc. aren't as pixelated, but everything is still oversized instead of shrunken down like as is normal. It says my desktop is at 1680x1050 as the monitor is and what stuff on my desktop has on it looks more high-definition, but the actual size of icons, cursor, etc. almost suggest like it's running on a lower resolution.

3) As I tried to reinstall the driver from the website and it didn't do much to change the problem, I tried instead to use the CD again and it's giving me h3ll about it. I even went so far as to uninstall it through both normal and safe mode boots and do a Norton Utilities scan to scan for junk files and registry entries as well as try some driver cleaner software to get rid of excess stuff that may not have been gotten rid of, and then use the EVGA driver CD. But the driver CD will show up the autorun window, but then when I try to install the drivers it gives me an error message saying "Access denied". Why is it doing that?

And I know fully well it's the Windows Update of the nVidia driver that is doing this because it did it just after I installed it. It screwed things up BAD and will not do something so stupid as taking their nVidia updates from this point on, but the question still remains... How do I get the d@mn drivers to work PROPERLY? How do I get the visual display to be 100% FULLY WORKING?

It's starting to really tick me off.

 

[yowanvista]

Remove the Nvidia driver and use Driver sweeper to remove leftover Nvidia driver files
Then reinstall the Nvidia driver

 

[JackOfSpades]

Remove the Nvidia driver and use Driver sweeper to remove leftover Nvidia driver files
Then reinstall the Nvidia driver

Yeah, well I think I tried that and it didn't work, but I'll try what you said anyways.

 

[JackOfSpades]

OK, I just tried that and it still failed. I uninstalled the nVdia display driver and tried to install it from the CD and it still says "Access Denied" and the driver download off of nVidia's website didn't chance anything. WTF? Those idiots at Microsoft didn't watch this careful enough and now I'm paying for it. It's because of their cr@ppy service that I'm dealing with this.

NOW what do I do?

 

[richnrockville]

FWIW: I had almost the same situation with the nvidia drivers. I had to completely uninstall the video adapter and then when it rebooted. I had to then point to my cdrom with the original drivers for the nvidia board.

Don't let the system install "the best" drivers for your board. Select which ones you want to install.

Rich

PS: Something tells me that Microsoft did not create the drivers for your board, so blaming them is peeing in wind.

 

[JackOfSpades]

OK nvm. It's solved now. I sweeped the h3ll out of it and reinstalled the drivers from the stand-alone download. No more black flicker screen and the oversized everything was due to some retarded resetting of my desktop settings that for some reason made the icons and everything larger. I had to reset them to medium and log off and all is well.

The "Access Denied" error is still there but it has something to do with Windows 7 automatically encrypting files. That's not my fault.

 

[JackOfSpades]

FWIW: I had almost the same situation with the nvidia drivers. I had to completely uninstall the video adapter and then when it rebooted. I had to then point to my cdrom with the original drivers for the nvidia board.

Don't let the system install "the best" drivers for your board. Select which ones you want to install.

Rich

PS: Something tells me that Microsoft did not create the drivers for your board, so blaming them is peeing in wind.

How is that possible? My mobo is an Asus P6X58D Premium and my video card is an EVGA GTX 460 SE. Both Asus and EVGA are major brands.

Needless to say, MS can go do something with themselves if they think I'm going to do an MS Update for my video drivers. I'll go to nVidia myself from now on.

 

[Fumz]

How is that possible? My mobo is an Asus P6X58D Premium and my video card is an EVGA GTX 460 SE. Both Asus and EVGA are major brands.

Needless to say, MS can go do something with themselves if they think I'm going to do an MS Update for my video drivers. I'll go to nVidia myself from now on.

It's possible because of the way Windows Update functions.

Windows Update does not search the internet for the latest drivers specific to your system; instead, Windows Update relies on vendors to submit drivers. Vendors aren't always very good about that, so very often you will see Windows Update giving people old/corrupted drivers. If the latest drivers aren't in the Windows Update store, it can't give them to you.

This is the very reason why it's recommended to visit the vendors site and get drivers from the horses mouth. Only use Windows Update to update Windows and other Microsoft products... that's it... otherwise what will happen is exactly what you've just experienced.

It's not Microsofts fault that Asus, nVidia and EVGA are lazy...

 

[Airbot]

Have to agree on that. Learned myself long ago firsthand with a similar outcome not to install graphics drivers from WU, but instead from the manufacturers site itself. In my experience, WU doesn't do Nvidia/AMD graphics updates very well. Hit and miss. This is only my opinion though. Others may not agree with that.

 

[jrfrazier1]

The above comments may be true, but the vast majority of Windows users defer to Microsoft default settings, which for updates is the "Automatic" setting. This means every day end users (most of the people running Windows) will get corrupted software pushes automatically from Microsoft from time to time. Maybe Nvidia should work better with the MS people, but the latest Windows 7 64 bit "critical" update ruined a large number of computers here in our offices and in the surrounding area. We've spent significant resources now to go in and fix the systems one by one, in some cases having to ultimately do fresh windows 7 installs to correct the problems, as simple driver updates or cleaning/replacement seems not to work well for some reason.

I would just like to see MS take a little more responsibility for their updates, especially those which they push in an automatic fashion to regular end users who are not working in IT. If the vendors who make products used in windows machines are not responsible enought to keep their driver databases updated with MS, then Microsoft has a responsibility to recognize this problem and not include those drivers in updates... or at a minimum, check that the driver databases are up to date and not corrupted. I know the usual Microsoft MO is to push out things and let IT deparatments fix them, but this one in on Microsoft, not NVidia.

 

[jrfrazier1]

As an addendum, the problem is with Nvidia 275.xx drivers. Rolling back to a previous driver and turning off any automatic windows updates will usually fix the issue. Of course, you also need to tell the user not to update anything from Nvidia or else they'll end up with the faulty driver series again...

Nvidia forums indicate they recognize the problem, but whether they will do much about it... who knows.

 

[Fumz]

The above comments may be true, but the vast majority of Windows users defer to Microsoft default settings, which for updates is the "Automatic" setting. This means every day end users (most of the people running Windows) will get corrupted software pushes automatically from Microsoft from time to time. Maybe Nvidia should work better with the MS people, but the latest Windows 7 64 bit "critical" update ruined a large number of computers here in our offices and in the surrounding area. We've spent significant resources now to go in and fix the systems one by one, in some cases having to ultimately do fresh windows 7 installs to correct the problems, as simple driver updates or cleaning/replacement seems not to work well for some reason.

I would just like to see MS take a little more responsibility for their updates, especially those which they push in an automatic fashion to regular end users who are not working in IT. If the vendors who make products used in windows machines are not responsible enought to keep their driver databases updated with MS, then Microsoft has a responsibility to recognize this problem and not include those drivers in updates... or at a minimum, check that the driver databases are up to date and not corrupted. I know the usual Microsoft MO is to push out things and let IT deparatments fix them, but this one in on Microsoft, not NVidia.

It's not that the comments "may" be true; it's how Windows Update works... and yes, every day people get out-dated and sometimes corrupted drivers. Microsoft isn't responsible for every vendor under the sun, they can't be... Microsoft can only be responsible for Microsoft. I'm no MS fanboy, but this criticism is really unfair.

Nobody's perfect... and with such a wide variety of platforms, from time to time things are going to mess up; this is reality, and it's unavoidable.

Instead of having the unrealistic expectation that Microsoft be responsible for every non-Microsoft part we put in our systems, it's up to users to be responsible for their own machines; it's up to us to put a modicum of effort into knowing how the machines we rely on operate... instead of laying blame everywhere else but us when things don't go right.