Installed latest Nvidia drivers, lost Physx support

Up until today I had the 169.12 version of Nvidia drivers on my PC running CoH. Outdated by a long time, I know, but I never had any problems in the game so never saw a need to upgrade them. While under this version, I had a separate program folder menu for Ageia and it's program options. In CoH, the Physx support was enabled.

I tried installing a new game today and was informed my PC had old Nvidia drivers and I'll need to upgrade to play the new game. So I did, to the 195.62 version. I got a prompt box while installing saying I may need to install again if this install fails. I bypassed it, and the install completed successfully.

I login to CoH to see that my Physx support is now greyed out and unchangeable. I logout, check my program menu and see that the Ageia program folder is now gone, but there are now options in the Nvidia Control Panel for Physx support. It is enabled, or so it says. I checked the Device Manager, and the computer still recognizes the Ageia Physx card.

Overall question, what problem did I cause by installing the new drivers? With this, does the prompt I received during the install indicate a Phsyx driver never loaded and I need to load them again correctly?

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

you would probably be better off asking on the nvidia site for things like this. i'm going to guess that your card is an older card that doesn't support physx.

It's a GeForce 8800 GT. If it was an older card issue, why did it work before I applied these drivers?

Note that I am not very savy with video drivers and the like. I just install and hope for the best.

Don't happen to have an ATI graphics card in there, either onboard (is there such a thing?) or as a second card? NVIDIA disables PhysX now if you have an ATI card in your system.

Nope, just the single Nvidia one.

Quick question, do you actually HAVE an Ageia PhysX card? As in the physical card? Or are you referring to the built-in PhysX of most nVidia cards?

Edit: While waiting for the answer, I guess I'll explain a bit.

When City Of Heroes introduced support for PhysX, it was for the actual Ageia PhysX card. Shortly after this, nVidia bought PhysX and started manufacturing cards with PhysX built-in. City Of Heroes never actually supported PhysX outside of the physical card Ageia created. As the nVidia drivers progressed, the PhysX drivers changed and were updated obviously. Basically, if you're not running an actual Ageia PhysX card, you will not see support for PhysX.

We'll see....

Short of cracking my case open, I see from my originial order of the PC that the Ageia Physx card is listed separate of the Nvidia card. I also see in the device manager of the PC the Ageia Physx Adapter is listed separate of the Nvidia display adapter.

Sorry, does that help at all?

It sounds like you have a physical Ageia card. The problem lies with the drivers then. As I said, nVidia purchased PhysX and Ageia no longer manufactures those cards. Drivers for your physical PhysX card are probably super old and when you installed the nVidia drivers it probably installed PhysX for your actual video card and not the physical PhysX card.

I know there are other users here who have Ageia PhysX cards, and they might want to chime in and give you explicit instructions on how to use the latest nVidia drivers for your video card while still being able to utilize the Ageia card, but until then you may want to do as Sharker_Quint suggested and contact nVidia. Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

Additional Note: nVidia does have seperate PhysX drivers as well. I believe they may be beta. You could try those as well. But I'd research it a bit on Google first.

We'll see....

Thanks Flameshot. You're help is really appreciated. I've submitted a help ticket with Nvidia and will see what they say.

Well Nvidia has been zero help and does not respond to support tickets apparently. Any advice from others here? My next step is to consider a full re-install of my PC to flush out all the drivers and such.

Try installing the original Ageia PhysX drivers. There is probably a conflict between the NVidia drivers and the Ageia drivers, and you want the Ageia drivers for CoH. Only problem with this is if your new game uses the NVidia PhysX drivers, then the new game wont be able to use PhysX. I was never able to see what PhysX added to CoH since I never had one of the old cards, but odds are CoH will bring PhysX support back for the new NVidia API with Ultra Mode, but that's something you would have to wait for.

Hi. I no longer have an NVIDIA card, but if I recall correctly, installing the PhysX drivers from NVIDIA added an icon in the Control Panel where you could SELECT between "Ageia PhysX" and "GeForce PhysX". Make sure the Ageia one is selected if you have the actual card.

Edit: found you a screenshot.

Leandro - you are not alone! I have a more updated story, however, and will fill in some gaps for you. Perhaps we can work together to find the solution. (Skip the next two paragraphs to avoid my pointless banter.)

I have an XPS 710 that I upgraded (two years after paying the thing off) with a Quad Core Xtreme 6800, 8800 GTX, and 4 GB of RAM. The next step was upgrading to 64-bit OS, but I wanted to wait for 7, and now I'm just procrasinating (what a waste). Initial system does indeed have the Physx 100-series Aegia card.

I have the computer on most of the time - by most, I mean it is set to auto turn-on at 0600, play some soothing Jack Johnson tunes - not really for me, but more to stave the beast that sleeps next to me. Wake her up wrong, and I might lose some fingers. Ah, I digress. I update my graphics divers via NVIDIA's control panel function, alerting every day (if needed) at around 5:30 - at this point, I should mention I am anal retentive by nature, and am lucky to have chosen the appropriate profession in life (Program Manager). Can you tell I am new that this whole forum thing yet?

The LAST update, NVIDIA's update fully integrated the Physx software (UI) into its Control Panel, as well as removed any previous version of AEGIA before 8.0xx. Yes, they do install the latest (9.09xx) with the update, but I kinda liked the separation, as it had some good sanity check tools within - diagnostic check, reset the card, run demos, and provided a good mht link to read documents (web page look viewing documents in AEGIA's help file).

Ok, to the game - I dont know why it isn't showing up anymore (N/A), but it is certainly frustrating. One thing I can tell you, is it is not the location of the AEGIA - wish it was that simple. I tried creating a copy in the original location, as well as deleting the physxloder and cooking files from COH directory (it will update them via manifest). Nada. I even tried rolling back the driver. Unfortunately, once you update, it wipes the old, installs the new, and only offers one version back - officially stuck.

Unfortunately, I think the UI is gone for good, but there may be a way to get the game option back on - this is where I could use help. There is some correlation between 1. NVIDIA's files and AEGIA's drivers, AND 2. COH's interaction with NVIDIA & AEGIA. To correct:

regedit:
Locate NVIDIA's assigned location for AEGIA drivers (now)
Find COH call for AEGIA support (old)
Place a copy of the (new) AEGIA files into the (old) location
Ensure reg assignments are not coded incorrectly (0 where it should be 1).

Thoughts?

as long as it isn't actually changing any of the game code.....