Question nVidia driver problem

[Joseph_138]

I currently have 2018 nVidia driver installed to an old Core 2 Quad system with a GTX 660. Whenever I try to update it to the latest, it crashes and I have to roll back in safe mode. Is there something about the Core 2 Quad that doesn't allow the latest driver to run? What is the newest driver that I can use, and where can I get it? The oldest driver on nVidia's site is 451.something, from 2020, and that doesn't work, either.

 

[jamesmak]

Are you using nVidia Geforce Experience? What are your pc specs? Have you properly uninstalled the old gpu driver with DDU?

 

[Joseph_138]

Are you using nVidia Geforce Experience? What are your pc specs? Have you properly uninstalled the old gpu driver with DDU?

I can't update the driver using GeForce Experience, so I uninstalled it. It only installs the 471.77 driver, which gives BSOD. I'm not uninstalling the old driver, because I'm afraid I may not be able to roll back to it after. I just need to know where to find drivers prior to the 451.whatever driver. I don't need help installing it. The problem isn't anything that DDU can fix. The newer drivers are incompatible with my hardware for some reason, and that can't be fixed by a clean install of an incompatible driver.

The error message is

SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED nvlddmkm.sys

The old driver that is in there works fine, it's only trying to update that brings the error and BSOD.

It's a Dell XPS 700, but I have a Core 2 Quad installed in it that wasn't from Dell.

 

[jamesmak]

Hello sorry for the late response. I'm not sure if nVidia supports drivers prior to 451 for your card since they are very old, the only drivers you can find are on the nVidia's official site:

Spoiler

Lade dir die neuesten offiziellen GeForce-Treiber herunter

Lade dir die neuesten offiziellen GeForce-Treiber herunter, um das Gaming-Erlebnis auf deinem PC zu verbessern und Apps schneller auszuführen.

www.nvidia.com

.
Through a google search I found the most stable one from the official site as well and it's 347.88 but it's a 2015 release so use at your own risk:

Spoiler: 347.88

NVIDIA DRIVERS GeForce Game Ready Driver WHQL

The error message is

SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED nvlddmkm.sys

The old driver that is in there works fine, it's only trying to update that brings the error and BSOD.

It's a Dell XPS 700, but I have a Core 2 Quad installed in it that wasn't from Dell.

The Core 2 Quad shouldn't be a problem that the driver can't install, it's when the Anti-aliasing - Gamma correction is set to (OFF) in the NVCP, to prevent this error message you should set back that setting to default (ON) in NVCP if it's causing a BSOD.

But my humble opinion, keep a system recovery point close by before messing around with these stuff so you can revert back if anything messes up and please use DDU to do a clean install of an earlier driver because it might mess up your GPU.

 

[Joseph_138]

Hello sorry for the late response. I'm not sure if nVidia supports drivers prior to 451 for your card since they are very old, the only drivers you can find are on the nVidia's official site:

Spoiler

Lade dir die neuesten offiziellen GeForce-Treiber herunter

Lade dir die neuesten offiziellen GeForce-Treiber herunter, um das Gaming-Erlebnis auf deinem PC zu verbessern und Apps schneller auszuführen.

www.nvidia.com

.
Through a google search I found the most stable one from the official site as well and it's 347.88 but it's a 2015 release so use at your own risk:

Spoiler: 347.88

NVIDIA DRIVERS GeForce Game Ready Driver WHQL

The Core 2 Quad shouldn't be a problem that the driver can't install, it's when the Anti-aliasing - Gamma correction is set to (OFF) in the NVCP, to prevent this error message you should set back that setting to default (ON) in NVCP if it's causing a BSOD.

But my humble opinion, keep a system recovery point close by before messing around with these stuff so you can revert back if anything messes up and please use DDU to do a clean install of an earlier driver because it might mess up your GPU.

The driver is installing, it just blue screens when it does. It's not failing to install then crashing. The new driver version number shows up under device manager when I boot into safe mode. Somewhere between the driver that I have that works, and the one doesn't, something changed that broke compatibility with some part in my system. The system requirements for GeForce Experience say Core i3, i5, i7 CPU, so I can only assume it is the Core 2 CPU that is the problem with the newer drivers. Or maybe something in the BIOS isn't cooperating, but it's the last version that works with this machine. It's still really old, though. There has to be older versions of nVidia's drivers out there somewhere.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

I think they just retired support for the 700 series, so that may be part of why you are seeing that. Probably best to just leave it as is. That card is quite old.

I suppose that you could uninstall GeForce experience and attempt to reinstall but select custom install and try to install only the driver.

 

[Joseph_138]

I think they just retired support for the 700 series, so that may be part of why you are seeing that. Probably best to just leave it as is. That card is quite old.

I suppose that you could uninstall GeForce experience and attempt to reinstall but select custom install and try to install only the driver.

I only bought it because it was cheap and it was local, so I could have it right away. I actually figured a 650Ti being ideal for this CPU, but I found the 660 for less money than all the 650Ti's on ebay. A 750 non-Ti, while it would be bottlenecked, uses less power, but again, I can't find one for a price I'm willing to pay to update a machine this old. A GT 1030 would offer only slightly less performance than a GTX 650Ti, but only draw 30W. The video card madness is driving up the prices, even on these, to a level that I am unwilling to pay to upgrade such an old machine.

With all the people here who still use old hardware every day, or who just like to tinker, I can't believe that nobody knows of a repository for old video card drivers.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

I think you can Google and find old drivers.

https://drivers.softpedia.com/get/G...Force-GTX-660-Graphics-Driver-918132601.shtml

Perhaps those will do it. Usually though on older hardware you can also run windows update, check for optional updates. A lot of times it will find drivers for old hardware. So might be worth checking as well.

Looks like the drivers above work on windows 8, so hopefully they will work on windows 10.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/geforce-graphics-cards/5/291088/any-can-help-gtx-660-does-not-work-with-the-latest/

Found this thread on nvidia forums which may be of assistance. Looks like you aren’t the only one with those issues.

 

[Jmi20]

have you tried ddu for a clean install?

Ive run a gtx 750 ti with an old core2quad system and latest drivers work fine, so it cant be a problem with the cpu…

 

[Joseph_138]

have you tried ddu for a clean install?

Ive run a gtx 750 ti with an old core2quad system and latest drivers work fine, so it cant be a problem with the cpu…

I'm afraid I'll end up losing the driver that works if I use DDU. I can't find anywhere to redownload it once it's gone.

 

[Fix_that_Glitch]

How full is your drive and what size is it?

 

[Jmi20]

I'm afraid I'll end up losing the driver that works if I use DDU. I can't find anywhere to redownload it once it's gone.

oh, im sorry. Didnt read the previous replies thoroughly.

whats your driver version? Techpowerup has a lot of older versions.

 

[Joseph_138]

How full is your drive and what size is it?

It's a 2tb drive, and it's pretty empty because I deleted all the games that were installed on it. I can run all those better on newer machines, anyway, so there's no point keeping them on this one. It only has Windows 10 installed on it now. My CMOS battery died, though, so now I have to get another one before I can boot it up again. Dell doesn't provide support for Windows 10 on this machine, though, so I can't go there for help. They only support XP for most things, and Vista/7 for some things.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

You'll find plenty of older drivers here:
https://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us

There's actually no need to be running the latest drivers on older cards as NVidia stops adding new features/optimizations and such after 1 or 2 cycles of release. Just find a driver that works and stick with it.

 

[Fix_that_Glitch]

So is this a prebuilt system and what is the motherboard?

 

[Joseph_138]

So is this a prebuilt system and what is the motherboard?

It's a Dell XPS 700, still using the original motherboard. There was a warranty exchange program where they would allow you to swap it for a 720 motherboard, but this machine didn't get that, unfortunately. I bought it used on shopgoodwill.com for like $45. The shipping was killer, though, because it's 50 pounds. The 720 motherboard has much better power management, allowing more overclocking options. It also handles quad cores better than the 700 motherboards because it has better VRM's. The 700 was released with Pentium 4 or Core 2 Duo processors, only.

Update: I replaced the BIOS battery, and now it won't boot at all. It powers up for a few seconds, then shuts down again before it even reaches the BIOS screen. I think either the motherboard or the power supply is dead, and I can't be bothered replacing such expensive components on a machine this old. I'm going to pull my CPU out for later use in a new project, then this machine goes to the recycler with a few others that I have laying around that I don't need anymore.