[Solved] 8800GT died, is 196.75 to blame?

On 3/3 at about 2:30am I was playing an FPS online when my screen locked up with a bunch of red 'w's all over it. I was forced perform a hard shutdown on my computer. When it rebooted, and ever since, there are artifacts all over the screen; The configuration and color of the artifacts seems to be tied to the resolution and color depth. After my first reboot and seeing all of this for the first time, I knew my card was probably dead (in fact I was lucky to see anything), but I tried a few things to save it. I could not start the Nvidia control panel (says I have no Nvidia card in my computer). Control panel reported an error, and so stopped the device. I tried to rollback the driver. No luck. So I tried to update the driver.
Since then, I have found out about the 196.75 driver issues, and it sounds like it could be the cause of my problem. But I do not know what driver I had when the problem occured. As I said, I did some messing with the driver in a fruitless effort to fix my card, so when I look in the Nvidia directory and the only folders I see are for 186.16 and 196.34, I'm not sure that it means anything.

Can anyone tell me how I might find out if I had the 196.75 drivers installed when my system crashed?

Revert back to an older driver(with instructions)
http://anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=673

Right, thats why I want to find out if I even had that driver running when it died. The timing of it failing and the news break on the drivers could be nothing but coincidence, but I might write a complaint to Nvidia if I was running the drivers when it died. I've had the card for like 2 years and was planning a replacement as soon as fermi came out, but for the time being I am out a card. I have done a little 'experimenting' with overclocking the card in the past, but it was not overclocked when it failed. In fact, it had not been overclocked in awhile. I am still able to use it as a basic VGA card, but with artifacts on the screen (like in windows vertical lines or random lines/pixels during boot); im guessing its a shader problem from.

Anyone got any suggestions for how to find out what drivers I was running when it failed?

BTW, all the symptoms are the same as mine. Random lines even during POST/BIOS etc, i got random characters on the windows loading screen and the card wasnt recognized by windows.

You might want to provide him with a link then.

Well before MM closes this one too, I've experienced the problem myself. I got Bad Company 2 and I needed the new drivers to get any decent performance out of my dual 8800s. I did it and I can't force the fan above idle speed, however even at that speed I am lucky never to break 90c thanks to the great cooling on the 8800 GTS 512mb. The problem exists, and rivatuner is useless at this point.

That said, it is not what caused the problem with your card.

You have 2 drivers in your system, this can cause any number of problems. If your only experiencing these problems when booting into windows then I have a feeling that that is your problem. If the artifacts are present even in BIOS, you have a dead card.

Well unless this thread gets trolled there is no reason to close it , but if you know of the problem then why are you running that driver?

Darn!, we could have kept this going for ages and found out who the whingers were.

You realize that ATI's disclaimer says basically the same thing...

Even if I rolled back the drivers after the card died?
And how could someone provide proof that they were running those drivers?

Thank you all for your responses

If you just wanted proof, the closest thing would be screenshots of you using system restores to the point/days that show when you installed the new drivers. I don't always with mousemonkey but on this one, he's completely right.

Besides, there's no way Nvidia would refund or repair any broken 8800GTs. If word of that got out, they would be answering warranty and RMA email and telephone calls all day long and they wouldn't have time to write more bad drivers.

As I already stated, I was planning on upgrading when Fermi came out anyhow. So trying to imply underhanded-ness doesnt add anything to the conversation

As for the cooking it in the oven idea... Im not sure that solder cracks are the issue. It's acting like a problem on one or more shader units (I think), which means that wouldnt help. But if I can find a backup card, maybe I'll try it. (reminds me, I have a 6800 GT that died due to PSU failure. maybe I'll try it on that)

And MM, I know they are not 'liable' and all that legal-ness. Im not planning on filing any kind of law suit (what? I'd argue pain and suffering from not being able to play my games?!) However, to save face, Nvidia might be willing to give people a discount on their cards if they lost cards due to this driver issue. Obviously, some kind of proof that you were running those drivers at the time of failure and the type of failure might be need to be submitted to get this discount. Which brings up the question of how do you prove that you were running those drivers?

Well, in light of the news that other drivers are affected by this bug (I know they are linux drivers, but if we are just finding out now about those, how many others might be affected?), I think im going to contact Nvidia regardless and see what they have to say. Thanks again for all your help.

Not that I want to get into an internet screaming match with anyone, but it has already been proven in more than one court that a EULA that is agreed to with a mouse click of "I Agree" does not constitute a valid legal contract. I'm sure that in others, the obverse has proven to be true.

That said - Nvidia has a liability here. If not a strict legal obligation, then customer faith liability. If a card is damaged, they are on the hook for its replacement. If the destruction of that caused damage to other components, they can probably absolve themselves of liability for that aspect. The fact is, while it didn't happen to everyone, it happened to a significant number of people. I am one of them.

I'm fairly certain that if your card has been damaged by this driver release, and you keep pushing for recompense, politely, it will occur. EULA be d*mned.

You might be right that a mouse click can't always be proven in a coirt of law to be a valid contract. But NVidia doesn't care about that or what is a valid contract. All they care about is covering their wallets and they and their 10 million dollar a year attorneys believe that the disclaimer is enough protection. If youwant to challenge that and bring in the "real" experts, please feel free to do so.

I'm fairly certain that when I go to amusement parks and the parking lots signs says not responsible for thefts from vehicles, I won't leave valuables in the car and I won't think that if they break in and steal my steering wheel (lol) I can sue the park for damages. You don't need a mouse click to be released from liability but it's a stronger case for Nvidia when the user has to click the mouse with the understanding the disclaimer was read and understood.

You want to pick a battle with Nvidia bout this, better to go with a class action. Good luck to you but I'm betting with smart money (Nvidia) on this one.