Nvidia drivers BSOD

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soad2237

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Hi everyone. I'm having quite an annoying issue here I thought someone may be able to help with. I own a Gateway P-6860FX laptop and I recently purchased Battlefield Bad Company 2. Upon running the game, I began noticing large black blotches, sometimes multicolor blotches, skewing the field of view. I hoped this wasn't a hardware requirement issue, but it seems my GPU is sufficient for running the game, so I looked for updated drivers for the NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTS and found the 258.96 (http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-64bit-258.96-whql-driver.html) driver update. (This was updated from the 7.15.11.6746 drivers on the Gateway website)

Cutting to the chase, I installed these drivers, and now I get random hangs where the mouse will stop moving for no reason, and this is only when I am not using a graphics intensive program. Not once has it cut out on me in the middle of Battlefield or any other game, but when doing random small tasks like using MS Word, the mouse will stop moving, the hard drive light will stop blinking, and the computer goes completely unresponsive. It seems like the issue is a BSOD without the BS, because when starting the computer back up after windows loads, I get a message that there is a driver conflict of some sort that pertains to the graphics card drivers. I actually reverted to the old drivers for a few minutes to see if the computer would freeze randomly and I got the results I had expected. No freezes or hangs at all. Battlefield however, was back to the old blotchy display. Does anyone have any idea whats going on here? I can collect more information like memory dumps from the "BSOD" if necessary. I am running the standard P-6860FX system with Windows Vista 64bit. Basically I don't want to have to reinstall drivers every time I play Battlefield. Thanks for taking the time to read, and even more thanks in advance for responding.
 
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It could also be your card failing though.

A friend of mine recently sent back a GT240 as when trying to run Crysis it would artifact. No overclocking, no overheating. We tried with different drivers and he'd still get issues. We RMA'd and now the problem is solved.

Just a heads up that not all issues like this are just drivers or software issues, it could be something wrong with your actual card.

acer0169

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The black and colour blotches sound like artifacts. They show when your graphics card is failing or getting too hot - either of which could be expected if you're trying to play BC2 (though your laptop is a nice one).

I installed the 25x.xx drivers a while ago on my desktop, never got on with them. I had performance drops and my overclock wouldn't stay stable. I put my graphics back to 197.xx and now I'm running smooth again.

Can you play BC2 on a lower res or lower graphic settings without the artifacts?
 

soad2237

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Thanks for the reply. No actually I'm unable to get rid of the artifacts no matter what video settings I use, unless I update to these new drivers. The older drivers work fine with everything else but Battlefield it seems. I checked the temperature of the GPU and it doesn't look like its running too hot. Either way, the artifacts show right when the game boots up, so I doubt the card heats up that quick. I guess I will try posting this issue in the Battlefield forums and see what they have to say since it seems to be specific to just that game. If anyone else has any ideas I will continue to check this thread and give as much information as necessary.

Thanks again!
 

acer0169

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It could also be your card failing though.

A friend of mine recently sent back a GT240 as when trying to run Crysis it would artifact. No overclocking, no overheating. We tried with different drivers and he'd still get issues. We RMA'd and now the problem is solved.

Just a heads up that not all issues like this are just drivers or software issues, it could be something wrong with your actual card.
 
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soad2237

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Good to know I still have my warranty from Best Buy. The only thing is, I need to find the time to send it in to be fixed. I asked them if I would be able to get a replacement laptop to use while it's being worked on and they told me I could buy a new one. They'll replace my card though if its failing. Hopefully..
 

soad2237

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http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=261180

I think I found what I needed here. I installed the drivers that this site directed me to and I've not had any problems since. They are unsigned 3rd party drivers and I'm not too sure about actual performance differences, but for me, the issues seem to be over. The problem was definitely a software one, as I am currently able to play Battlefield BC2 without artifacts, and I am able to sit idle or do less demanding tasks without the computer locking up and/or restarting. Thanks for all who helped with my issue. Hopefully others will be able to learn from this. :)


Driver assembly version: 7.15.11.7563
 
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