8800 and Vista Issues

[julesjt]

I been having issues with my 8800 Ultra and games, especially Bioshock. I finally got some lead way and found that a lot of people are having issues and there are actually class action suits going out about the issue. The problem is when doing high end graphics, Vista will crash the app and say the Nvidia driver stopped responding and started again.

I am curious anyone else on this forums seen the issue and tried any particular fixes?

One of the fixes suggested removing UAC and manually deleting all the nvidia drivers and then reinstalling the latest and they said that helped them out.

 

[tseska69]

I still have the issue on occasion, and did once in Bioshock. also in need for speed carbon. checking around various forums, this has been an issue since January when Vista was released...I have tried reinstalling the drivers for the video card, my monitor and my mobo, none of it seemed to work.

 

[julesjt]

Well I find it amazing that there is even an issue. There better be a real fix soon! From my readings on vista SP1 they show GPU fixes but SP1 will not be officially released til next year, get a fix out now

 

[JamesEak]

I can only run Bioshock in a window. If I run it with window mode truned off, I get a black screen with sound only. I updated all drivers and Vista hot fixes and it still will not run outside a window. Bioshock help department said I need to update to 163.44 drivers and install vista hot fixes, but I already had and it did not fix anything.
Bioshock runs great in a window with DX10 on and everything set to high (1280 X 960), but I don't want to run it in a window.

Quad Intel processor, 8800GTX, 4 gigs ram 800, Vista 32, 21 inch CRT monitor, ect.

 

[julesjt]

Did you try turning UAC off. This seem to help my situation. Just google turning off UAC in Vista if you need instructions

You can't play a game windowed, that is terrible!

Vista is the problem, why do you think SP1 is 1GB in size! Microsoft F'd up and they know it!

 

[ooral]

Wait until you try to use SLi..... It can be a nightmare in some games. I have to switch it off depending on the game. Never a problem in XP

 

[julesjt]

Wait I have one better, not sure if it is common knowledge that vista does not support EAX Sound. I have a X-Fi and people are having issues with that. Creative has an app that is suppose to give you eax sound but when you enable it and point that app to the game you want EAX sound, not only does the game not have eax sound but it doesnt have any sound at all.

If DX10 was on XP I would be on XP right now. I hate vista! How could you not support EAX Sound Technology?

 

[kcrush]

I finally managed to get Vista to stop doing that for three weeks now. Prior to doing this just loading up my fav. MMO would crash the driver without fail right after trying the various solutions posted on the web.

Here is the trick.

Gather all the various hotfixes, and solutions you've seen on the web. (I can't even remember how many there are).

Make sure if you have a 680i mb to underclock the ram back to 800 (even if you have 1066 or higher rated ram). Min 2GB of ram.

Update all patches, except windows defender.

Turn the UAC off.

Go into windows defender, there is an option to edit which programs windows defender will allow at start up. Go through the list until you see windows defender and remove it. (yes I'm using windows defender to remove windows defender, its the only way to be sure). Reboot.

Turn off automatic updating and every time you get a windows defender update, just hide the stupid thing and not update it as it will only break something else.

Boot into safe mode and do every solution you can find all at once, rebooting as many times as necessary, then turn the UAC back on.

Don't play a game in full screen mode, Vista can't handle it for more than short sessions. It also has a problem with ram clocked faster than 800 (even if the ram is rated higher than that), no idea why. You do either and you're inviting the driver crash to come back.

After doing all of this my fav. Dx7 MMO runs with no problem (it used to crash the driver just loading). And I can finally run all those DX10 demos.

The driver revision actually didn't make a difference as I reinstalled one from the 100.xx revision the current WHQL version and the NVIDIA beta one and everything works fine on all three.

Since doing this I've run every program that used to die horribly on me and had zero problems.

 

[julesjt]

That is rediculous! I find unbelievable that this is one of the suggest solutions. Is Vista worst then Windows ME?

I will first test the UAC, I can't go windowed mode on my games, no freaking way!

 

[kcrush]

Yes it is ridiculous, I tried them all individually over weeks and none worked for more than a couple of hours..day at most. I had to do them all at once with the UAC off and defender permanently disabled to get stable.

Vista is pretty, but takes a lot of work to make it stable. I can actually do stuff now.