Do you actually need to load any nVidia software? Is it possible to use the hardware in purely basic VESA mode?
If the answers to the above are unfortunately "yes & no",
That is a..... Yes and No
Without it my monitor doesnt run at the correct resolution, and without the nVidia CP I cant run dual monitors. I 'think' the basic I can get away with is the nvidia control panel. Which is what I intend to try after a clean windows install.
This afternoons experiment seems to point the blame at GeForce Experience - or at least something that is installed with it such as NvStream
Something is seriously wrong atm with nvidia and since this has been ongoing for hundreds of people since last Nov, I cant understand why they cant get to the bottom of it. Theres also people on here such as Newtron Star [
1 and ronski in his post above who admitted that the update causes them issues too, but not serious enough to cause a long term problem.
Touch wood without the GeForce bulk its now running fine again
so this afternoons work hasnt been fruitless, in that I know if I can just use drivers without other rubbish then at least the network is 100% fine, and touch wood its not frozen if GeForce is added.
then maybe time has come to replace the nVidia graphics controller with something completely different?
This has seriously put me - and many others judging by the state of their forum - off nvidia. Unfortunately theres not that many other options though, we seem to have a rather limited choice of nvidia or amd. How many people wont bother visiting the forums and just think their PC is broken. The average bod would just take it to PCworld, who would say "broken graphics card you need a new one", and present them with a bill for £150.
I know this isnt a top of the range card, but it still cost me iirc @£120... it worked fine for over a year until I stupidly updated the drivers.. and thats why I was looking for an old version of the drivers again.
From this afernoons experiment, I 'think' that as long as I use one of their downloads and am VERY careful about what I let it install then I may be ok.
In future, I must
not let wupdate install or update anything hardware related, because that appears to silently install the GeForce experience without giving you any option.
Looking back now. The network issues I had last year with slow speeds which were Rwin related (was that really something to do with nvStreamSvc? ) the bluescreening when I thought my graphics card was knacked and the PC wouldnt reboot
link, then the failure of my SDD so soon. The past few months its been one PC niggle after another. I cant recall EVER having had so many issues with my own PC and now everything seems to be pointing at one possible same source. I guess I will never know re the OCZ drive, but without doubt the amount of blue/black screens Ive had over the past few months will not have done any drive any good, regardless of make.
I guess its my own fault for making
this post in October. Ye gawds has that bit me on the butt big time
I think the answer is to do a custom install, and only install the graphics driver and physX, and make sure Windows Update is not set to automatically install drivers.
Yep thats the next plan of action.. Just wanted to make sure its stable atm with just those 2.
Bit hard to tell for sure on such a bare system though. Once I start installing all the programs then it becomes a work-horse again.
I dont want to spend a week putting everything back on and then it crash again, so I'll leave it bare for the next few days.