Trevor: nVidia 175.19 Drivers Locking Vista Up? (updated)

[Eueadan]

<p>Trevor,</p><p>I wanted to point out an issue with the nVidia 175.19 drivers (Vista 32-bit).</p><p>Earlier this week, I bought and installed Spore.  As part of installation, it required that I upgrade my video drivers, so I upgraded to 175.19.</p><p>Other than installing Spore, the ONLY change to my setup was changing my video drivers.  I played EQ2 an hour before installing the new drivers, and logged in ~3 hours after.  After the upgrade, EQ2 always locks up shortly after logging in.  Now EQ2 is now unplayable.  Within 5-10 minutes, textures start to scramble on the screen, the computer hangs, and I get the BSOD.</p><p>This HAS to be caused by something with nVidia's 175.19 drivers, as that is the only change I made to my system prior to the lockups.</p><p>I noticed several other people running the 175.19 drivers and having similar problems, but various people attributing the problems to loose memory, routers, and the such.</p>

[Eueadan]

<p>Update:</p><p>After posting, I wiped all nVidia drivers off my computer, and reverted to the previous version (169.25).  Now that version is broken too, although it acts differently.</p><p>With 175.19 (and the beta 177 versions, which I also tried), I get an increasing number of rectangles of mixed textures until the game locks up and BSOD 5-10 minutes in.</p><p>With 169.25, the game just hangs and BSOD.  It seemed like it happened when I casted, but not regularly at the same point.</p><p>Either way, EQ2 is now unplayable.</p><p>What else would have changed in the 3 hours I was messing with the Spore installation if not the drivers?  DirectX update?  EQ2 hotfix (it was the evening, so I don't think this is likely)?  Windows update that just took effect?</p><p>Other than dxdiag and my system setup, what other info do you need to diagnose?</p>

[Baaltar]

Since you dont post your Hardware specs, Im gonna guess your running an SLI setup. Take off SLI and try again.

[Eueadan]

<p>Sorry about the lack of specs...  I thought I had the problem isolated to the new drivers last night, so I didn't think I would need them.  Now I'm at work, so I will have to post the specs tonight.</p><p>To answer your question about SLI:  Yes, I am running an SLI rig (with the profile set up to use a single card for EQ2).  I will try disabling SLI, but would be surprised if that were the problem as I have been running EQ2 with SLI enabled for over a year with no problems. *shrug*</p><p>I will try that and post stats tonight.</p>

[TSR-TrevorG]

The drivers hould not be causing that issue.  Especially if you have uninstalled the drivers (hopefully with a driver cleaner program), rebooted and reloaded more drivers.Go ahead and try the SLI ussue and then post your DXDIAG and MSINFO later on if you could please.<a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=353617" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=353617</a>

[Eueadan]

<p>Trevor, thanks for responding.  I think I may have figured the problem out...</p><p>I tried disabling SLI with no luck, and did another driver cleaner and reinstallation of the 175.19 drivers.  Same error.  I tinkered with some other settings, and then started searching around the forums for anything else that could be wrong.</p><p>Some of the heat posts sounded somewhat like my problem, so I cracked my case again with a flashlight and started looking around.  The radiator on my water cooling system had a bunch of dust on it, so I vacuumed that off really well and have been playing most of the night without a lockup.</p><p>Looks like the dust on my water cooler might have reached critical mass at the same time I installed the new drivers.  If so, what are the chances of that?</p><p>One other question for you though:  I noticed that in my default SLI profile with the 175.19 drivers, SLI is enabled by default rather than the former setting of "single."  Is that right?  Is EQ2 supposed to be working better with SLI in the near future?</p>

[TSR-TrevorG]

Glad you destroyed the EPIC dust bunnies!As for futher GPU support I have no word on that yet.  I know that multi core support is incoming and is on test now though.  Hopefully our  new graphics guy will make a postabout his work. <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />