Aaargh - nVidia Card Bombs my Laptop

February 25, 2007 @ 12:45 pm- from Maui, Hawaii

Got up this morning turned on my machine and within a few minutes the video blew up locking the machine. The machine has been running rock solid and other than an MSDN DVD installation yesterday nothing new's been installed on this box for quite some time.

So, I troubleshoot, right? Reboot - and boom the box blue screens when it loads into Aero. Reboot again same thing. Reboot into safe mode and it comes up fine. Disable any unnecessary drivers, reboot and it still locks up (no more blue screens now it goes into Aero and after 2 or 3 seconds either blacks the screen and locks or brings back a completely scrambled screen and locks).

So, I try different drivers. In the course of Vista's release I've run about 10 different drivers all of which have worked with different kinds of quirks. None of them work now -different visual effects but same end result of a locked machine or a blue screen.

But here's what really sucks about troubleshooting this in Vista: I can boot up in Safe Mode and that works just fine, but nowhere in this fucking process can I choose to install the generic VGA driver permanently. Vista doesn't show the driver anywhere, doesn't allow selecting it nothing. So I can't at least try and boot up without nVidia drivers.

More importantly though, while in Safe Mode I can't turn off Aero for when the machine comes back up with the nVidia drivers. I suspect whatever the problem is has to do with the higher end features of the card, so running in non-Aero mode probably would at least let me continue to use the machine for a while. But I can't see a way to tell Vista NOT to use Aero when it comes back up.

I finally managed to boot up with a VGA driver by removing all the nVidia drivers one at a time in Device Manager:

Select the active nVidia Drive
Uninstall the device
Scan for changes
Uninstall the next driver

Repeat until there are no drivers left - then reboot. At this point I actually boot into the VGA driver, but upon boot Vista helpfully AUTOMATICALLY installs a new (supposedly the install default) nVidia drivers, so I can't seem to make the VGA driver permanent.

To Vista's credit it looks like this problem is a hardware issue not a Vista or driver issue as all the drivers are failing for me. I even plugged in my other hard disk that I used to run a previous version Vista with and it too fails with the same exact failure.

So now I'm looking at dealing with warranty with Dell. I know that'll be loads of fun since the machine was purchased with XP.

FWIW, this nVidia card has been the worst investment ever in a machine. The nVidia Vista drivers have been absolute crap and have never been really stable. To this day these drivers (when they were working) would cause funky behavior with dual monitors and odd 'black outs' where the screen occasionally would just go blank for a couple of seconds and then pop back as if the card was resetting itself. Until the most recent driver you couldn't even tweak teh basic video settings like color balance contrast etc. Pathetic - nVidia had only what 5 years to get ready for Vista and now they're issuing letters of apology... Now this apparently hardware failure after almost exactly one year of service is really the final straw.

I've never been one for buying high end video cards and the only reason I ended up buying the nVidia card because it was the only thing available that would run Aero...

<sigh> now the fun begins wrestling once again with Dell and support trying to get this defective card fixed/replaced. This is almost EXACTLY 1 year after I got the machine (shipped 1/26/2006) - how convenient. Luckily when I bought this machine I opted for the higher end support so hopefully this can be done in a somewhat timely manner.

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re: Aaargh - nVidia Card Bombs my Laptop
by Rob Conery February 25, 2007 @ 3:34 pm

Hey Rick - I feel your pain! Same situation with me entirely. nVidia has a "beta" release out of ForceWear 100.39 ( I think that's the one) and it's PCI compliant on Vista.

I have a feeling maybe something on your system got overheated - dust buildup maybe? I wrote up a similar post (but have also put up some links for drivers) here:
http://blog.wekeroad.com/archive/2007/02/16/Vista-and-NVidia--WTF.aspx

I hope this helps you... I'm about ready to pop for a new ATI myself. Works great on my little laptop (MacBook :).

Cheers,
Rob

re: Aaargh - nVidia Card Bombs my Laptop
by Steve February 25, 2007 @ 5:59 pm

I've never had a problem with NVidia, and I've had ATI cards fry in my machine.

It's just part of running computer hardware

re: Aaargh - nVidia Card Bombs my Laptop
by Steve February 25, 2007 @ 6:00 pm

I should add, you continue to provide me good reasons not to run Vista.

Amazing that after all this time Microsoft still can't get it right.

re: Aaargh - nVidia Card Bombs my Laptop
by Steve from Pleasant Hill February 25, 2007 @ 6:00 pm

I had an nVidia card in a desktop that failed. Had no idea what the trouble was until a friend told me to count the 'beeps' during boot up, and then refer to my motherboard manufacturer's website. In this case 8 beeps meant video card failure.

Went and bought some other brand. Don't know if this 'analysis' method works on laptops -- sure save me lots of time though.

re: Aaargh - nVidia Card Bombs my Laptop
by Rick Strahl February 25, 2007 @ 7:08 pm

Uh Steve (b), this isn't a Vista problem - this is clearly an nVidia problem. Most likely it's a hardware issue but if not that a driver issue. Vista doesn't make switching or trouble-shooting easy, but it's not at fault for the failure.

As far as the OS is concerned it's been rock solid - a few incompatibilities with applications aside due to drivers as well.

There are things to bitch about with Vista, but this for once isn't one of 'em. There's no excuse for the crap drivers that nVidia has been dishing out recently.

re: Aaargh - nVidia Card Bombs my Laptop
by Bill Plander February 25, 2007 @ 11:04 pm

...unless you can get a quick and painless response from Dell, I wouldn't even waste the time trying to get it fixed under the warrantee. I'd just buy a new video card on eBay and suck up my losses.

re: Aaargh - nVidia Card Bombs my Laptop
by Jeff Atwood February 26, 2007 @ 12:09 am

Rick, It does sound like you have a bad card. I use an NVIDIA 7600GT in my work machine, and I've had no issues at all with the latest ForceWare drivers.

Also, be sure to check your refresh rate setting with LCDs (on the advanced, monitor tab). Anything higher than 60 Hz can cause the "occasionally, the screen goes black for a few seconds" problem in my experience. LCDs don't use refresh rate, so 60 Hz is the correct setting anyway.

But yes, NVIDIA's Vista driver support has lagged ATI's substantially. You might try switching to ATI if you're really unhappy. Anything at the X1300 level or higher is what I recommend.

re: Aaargh - nVidia Card Bombs my Laptop
by Rick Strahl February 26, 2007 @ 12:37 am

Bill, Jeff... unfortunately since it's a laptop card it's not quite so trivial to just plop in a new card <s>. Took a look at the service manual and to get the card out you pretty much have to disassemble the whole top of the machine.

Dell has pretty much told me to take a flying fuck - they don't support non-installed OSs and of course XP runs fine since it doesn't use any high end video native as Aero does. They're sending CDs to reinstall, but not sure this will even work. Trying to figure out some simple way to make the card blow up without running Vista now.

I'm going to check with a local shop here tomorrow but my local choices are uhm limited - downside of living on a small island in the middle of nowhere. In the meantime I spent the better part of the day today moving all my stuff onto another machine so I can get some work done.

Anybody have any suggestions for testing high end video preferrably from the DOS prompt to

re: Aaargh - nVidia Card Bombs my Laptop
by Abdu February 26, 2007 @ 11:01 am

I bought an nVidia based card for my XP recently and it kept restarting my computer. Returned the card and got an ATI card instead which worked flawlessly. I read too many nVidia horror stories. I would never use an nVidia card again.

re: Aaargh - nVidia Card Bombs my Laptop
by Jeff Atwood February 26, 2007 @ 11:14 am

Have you tried these drivers? (Check the latest 100-series entries)

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/

These guys take the standard NVIDIA Forceware drivers and modify the *.INF file so they support the OEM laptop cards.

re: Aaargh - nVidia Card Bombs my Laptop
by Kevin Davis February 26, 2007 @ 11:17 am

Rick,
Good luck with the Dell Techs. I recommend that when you finally get a tech on the phone, ask for a 2nd Tier Technician. They have more experience than the front line techs who seem to just look up prescript solutions to symptoms.

Aloha,

Kevin

re: Aaargh - nVidia Card Bombs my Laptop
by Rick Strahl February 26, 2007 @ 11:28 am

Jeff - yeah that's where I got my drivers from. But the drivers are not the problem. The failures I have occur with every driver.

I actually managed a way to get Vista to boot without AERO by turning off the Desktop Window Manager Service to disabled. That works to keep AERO from launching. However, with the nVidia drivers loaded video still bombs as soon as the card goes into its hi-res 1920x1650 resolution. One blue screen I was able to decipher mentioned a memory parity error which I suspect has to do with video memory (I did a quick swap of memory modules but the failures kept coming in exactly the same way which I think rules out the RAM modules being bad).

I'm somewhat encouraged by this though in that this will probably show up on XP as well, in which case I can at least have Dell take responsibility for it. I have to wait for the Dell CDs to show up - since they will NOT support me with Vista even though this is a hardware problem.

Kevin - the guy I talked to was actually reasonably knowledgable - I had a brief technical discussion with him after I mentioend that I will just give them plenty of grief by calling back until somebody picks this up - it seems the only way you can get anything done these days with tech support is by being a royal pain in the ass. They did bump me because I was insisting <s>.

But I'll be damned if I just lay down on a $2600 piece of hardware that has a hardware failure after 1 year and is still under warrantee for another.

re: Aaargh - nVidia Card Bombs my Laptop
by Speednet February 26, 2007 @ 12:54 pm

Rick,

You are 100% correct!

I have had more problems with my nVidia cards under Vista than anything else. The worst part is that I seriously invested in 2 heavy-duty SLI cards, and I still can't use both of them! SLI isn't even supported at all, unless you have 8000-series cards, which is nVidia's way of crapping all over people who spent $1,000 on video cards. So one of my SLI cards is nothing but a power-eating slot-filler at the moment.

Their drivers for Vista are utter crap too. I tried upgrading to the latest "signed" driver (100.65, or something), and it completely BOMBED my PC. It took half a day to recover from that mess, and now I'm back on 100.54, which is the only thing that seems to work.

What do they have, like one developer sitting there working on Vista drivers? They had years to work on this stuff, and they have been PATHETIC. I can't believe that FINALLY Microsoft supports cool graphics as part of the core OS -- something that would sell millions of high-end graphics cards -- and nVidia F's the whole thing up. What jerks!

re: Aaargh - nVidia Card Bombs my Laptop
by Aron Johnson May 29, 2007 @ 10:58 am

Exactly the same thing just happened to me with my acer. Graphics card wont boot and the only way to use the machine is by using standard vga drivers at 800x600. Exactly the same problems as you and mines only just out of warrenty by a few weeks. So annoying as i cant afford to replace the damn thing and id say a repair will be expensive.

re: Aaargh - nVidia Card Bombs my Laptop
by Dan November 08, 2008 @ 11:40 am

4 Blow Nvida Video Cards...3 Nvidia 8600gs and 1 8400gs have died,

I've currently witnessed the death of four NVIDIA gpu’s in four different notebooks (3 Hp and 1 Dell). I cannot even tell you how much time I've wasted helping people diagnose and fix NVIDIA’s poorly engineered cards. NVIDIA should be sued for the amount of hardache they've caused and or offer a proper replacement. From what I've read...they're replacing the dead cards with the same poorly engineered cards (ticking time bombs…embarrassing). Their quality control is just imbarrassing as they've produced so many defective cards. To top things off…they knew about the problems for over a year and still continued to produced the faulty 8000series.

I will never by Nividia again.

Dan