nVidia 335.23 update ruined my laptop

TimboKZ

Reputable
Mar 12, 2014
2
0
4,510
Everything was running ok, I had stable 30fps in BF4 on my Asus N76VZ with 8GB cpu, 2.3GHz and nVidia GeForce GT 650m 2GB. Then I've seen GeForce experience prompting a new update, so I've installed that damn 335.24 WHQL update.

Now, my laptop lags even when I read PDF's, and COD4:MW on minimum graphics gives me 10fps (funnily enough it gives me 10fps on max graphics while before the update it was ~250fps).

I've downloaded GPU-Z which revealed that my Intel HD4000 Graphics is 100% used and its temperature is 88 degrees celsium, while nVidia GeForce GT 650m is detected by pc, by geforce control panel, by GPU-Z, but it's 0% used.

I've tried windows rollback, driver rollback, full fresh install, cleaning the drivers from safe mode and installing older drivers, and had no luck. I have absolutely no idea how to solve this problem without reformatting hard drives or reinstalling windows, and I'm ready to send any logs you'd require if you can help me.

If it will make any sense, I've recently noticed that rundll32.exe uses a lot of RAM, nearly 220 000 kb.

And also, when windows loads after logging in, it runs ok at first (first 2 mins), but then when all the services begin to load the lag begins. I tried to enable nVidia GeForce GPU in nVidia Control Panel, and even though it says that it will activate, onboard Intel HD4000 is always used.

Additionally, when I only installed the driver, I rebooted my laptop and for some reason my personalisation settings were reset to default.
 

TimboKZ

Reputable
Mar 12, 2014
2
0
4,510
It turns out to be that nVidia wasn't the main reason, even though new drivers changed the way Optimus worked on my laptop so it will always try to use Intel HD4000, and use nVidia as last resort, what, in my opinion, isn't the best way to do it when it comes to performance.

The reason for the laptop to lag so much was a bitcoin miner which was named rundll32.exe and was running everytime I've booted my laptop. For some reason, HijackThis didn't solve the problem but ComboFix did. Funnily enough, rundll32.exe was located in a folder called Nvidio Drivers. I'm not sure if it was installed at the same time with the nvidia driver or if it was just an incredible coincidence.