corrupted driver=screen freeze! Part 1

I have been playing for 6 years with very few hitches. (Had to replace a dead video card not to long ago, but it gave me 4 years of great service.) I have little to no lag/rubberbanding/mapserves. I keep up to date on my drivers, keep my case free of dust, defrag faithfully and stay away from bloaty programs. Well, last night when I was on a video chat on Yahoo, my screen froze....3 times. I figured it might have been the latest beta version I just downlodad, so decided to go play in 'The City'. As soon as my character appeared BANG..freeze. I then went to YouTube and the video I chose was great until I hit the fullscreen...BANG...freeze. Opened the Device Manager and selected 'show hidden devices'. Under my video card was a clone, all greyed out! I NEVER saw that before. So, I thought I would do a clean driver install. (Uninstall, safe mode, Driver Sweeper, etc.) It was a total success. I am back to ONE entry under my vard setting, my videos are flawless at fullscreen and the Yahoo/Skype video chats run as they should.
The amazing thing is, my putersaurus is an HP Pavillion a564n and the card is an Nvidia 7900 GS agp...WinXP sp3...2 gigs ram...550 watt PSU...200 G hard drive. CoH runs great. (I can't crank the ultra mode settings all the way, but enough that the game looks beautiful.)
Sorry for the long post, but it amazed me that such an small, fixable thing could wreak such havoc. SO, if you are having screen freezes, you might try this. I followed specific and detailed instructions on doing a really clean driver install. They are in my next post, and it would be awesome if it helped someone else! (I am using the latest 260.99 driver.)

Before you begin the uninstall process

1) Stop windows from installing updates automatically. Go to your control panel, then windows upate, then

change settings. Change this setting to "Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install

them."

2) Disable or turn off any antivirus you have running, especially any that have some sort of real time scanner.

(Sorry but with so many apps you'll have to figure this one out on your own)

You are now ready to being the uninstall process.

1) Go to your control panel and go to programs and features or add/remove programs
2) Uninstall the NVIDIA Driver
3) Uninstall the NVIDIA PhysX
STOP! - do not uninstall anything else. close the applications window.

Next navigate to your device manager. This can also be found in your control panel.

In your device manager, navigate to the display adapters. Click on the little + button next to dispaly adapters

and you should now see your graphics card listed. Right click on your graphics card and click uninstall. At

this point a you'll get a pop up window-
NOTE: be sure to put a check mark in the box to "delete the driver software for this device"

Now that your driver is uninstalled we need to delete the driver folders. These can be located in the following

locations
- C:/NVIDIA/
Delete the "DisplayDriver" folder

- C:/Program Files/
Delete the entire "NVIDIA Corporation" folder

Go to this folder c:/Windows/System32/DriverStore/FileRepository. Delete any folder that begins with

nv_disp.inf (make sure you are deleting the correct folder here) If you are unable to delete this folder, please

see the bottom of this thread.


Now before you do ANYTHING else, read these next steps until your are instructed to re-boot your pc.

1) You are going to reboot your pc in safe mode (press F8 as your computer boots up)(DON"T DO THIS

NOW)
2) When options come up for safe mode, choose the first option on the list that only says "Safe Mode" (The

one without networking)

*Note* Windows will install a generic VGA driver once you boot. That is totally fine and will not affect your

install. There is no need to remove it.

Once your computer has booted and you now in windows safe mode

3) Open up Driver Cleaner Pro application.
4) Put check marks in the boxes next to the following items
- NVIDIA Display
- NVIDIA PhysX
5) Click the Analyze button
Once the program is done analyzing you should see a list of items with check marks next to all of them. If for

some reason all the items do not have checkmarks, you can click the * button, then select and then all.

6) Now click the clean button
7) Once that has completed. Close the application and reboot your machine as normal.

If you do not think you can remember these steps then I suggest you copy and paste this info into a word or

text doc and save it on your desktop so you can reference it. Remember, you will not have internet access

while you are performing these steps.

Once you have completed steps 1-7 you can proceed with the driver installation.

You may now go ahead and do steps 1-7 and then install your new drivers.

I did all this, repeatedly, and I'm still dealing with the crashing & resets.
I've checked Hardware & Software - every bit of it = (its taken about 2 weeks or so doing it - as my shrinking supply of patience has allowed), and I can't find anything solid to pin the issue on.

I've done ALL the things, and ALL of the stuff, Basicaly - 'you're supposed to do' - except for buying a whole new computer. And at this point I doubt even that would guarantee me an end to the problems, and it's not my connection either, I think it's some arcane code bug no one has been able to nail-down, much less address & actually fix.

(I haven't posted Logs yet - I don't know if I even want to install CohHelper - I haven't read a thread where that's actual helped this lately rash of crashing/resets/bugs, I have seen spec used as "that's card is too old", "It's probably fried", you don't have a big enough PSU (or RAM).

Or my new least favorite phrase = "All the Lastest Drivers" - or "try every combination of possible settings until it works" - or "You really should just go buy a new PC" ...

I'd swear it feels more & more like some of the techies around here gotta be working at NewEgg.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville City of Heroes didn't fail, City of Heroes was killed. If a 747 dropped on your house, you'd say you were killed, not you failed to find a safer dwelling.

CG, I am so sorry you are having so many problems..it is as frustrating as heck, I know. One of the problems I had was an adapter plug that went from the PSU to my card..it was bad, and I never even paid much attention to it...removing it allowed my new video card to WAI.

Please don't give up. I had 2 weeks of frustration after my old card died and I used a backup till my new card arrived via eParts®...I couldn't get onto CoH, and sometimes the screen would be garbles and speckled. It was that darn wire. THEN, the corrupted driver..after having it run so great, I was SO mad thinking "not again!" (I thought of taking it to Best Buy for a diagnostics check, but didn't have the bucks at the time..) You might want to go ahead and post a HijackThis and the CohHelper just for gp's...couldn't hurt. Hang in there. You will solve it, and maybe a new set of eyes can help.