Beware of NVIDIA 196.75 Driver update

Kylen · Mar 2010

My computer recently self destructed the other day due to the NVIDIA 196.75 driver update. Read more about it here

While trying to figure out exactly why my computer was chugging and blue screening I ended up frying my graphics card and potentially other components of my computer. The new driver update causes the fan on your NVIDIA graphics card to not function properly.

Please be aware of this issue so you don't roast your valuable equipment. Rollback to an earlier driver version if you have updated recently.

DrunkShaman · Mar 2010

the link doesnt work....

Also have you reported this to the NVIDIA?

EDIT: I am glad I am still running GF 8800 Ultra.

eld · Mar 2010

The Nvidia reported this to him!

or more like, It's official and they're most likely working on a fix.

Entity · Mar 2010

Guess nvidia fans can't say ati's drivers are bad anymore :P Sucks to those who got caught with this, a couple of my friends who did.

crazyfingers · Mar 2010

Thanks for the heads up, a graphic card catastophy would have been devastating right now. Lets hope they figure this out soon.

|Buddy| · Mar 2010

Thats why i keep SpeedFan on at all times, knowing what the temps are helps a lot

I skipped this driver update because i was on mobile internet when it came out, otherwise i would propably install it :S

Ben Apuna · Mar 2010

Sorry to hear about your fried graphics card. Hopefully Nvidia will reimburse you somehow.

Thanks for passing on the info.

Next time maybe go with fanless card, no need to worry so much about heat and zero noise.

hyrumark · Mar 2010

Seems Nvidia has taken this new driver down from their website.

Thanks for the warning though, I DID install it. But luckily I didn't do any heavy gaming, otherwise I may have fried my card too. Just uninstalled it and reverted back to 196.21.

carlo_c · Mar 2010

Cheers for the heads up, I usually update without checking anything about it will hold off for a bit

sicsided · Mar 2010

thanks for the heads up. My friend was complaining to me last night about L4D2 crashing on him, he sent me a pic to of what happens before it crashes. It was duplicating UI items all over the screen, and then 4x4 pixel distrotion boxes would appear. Looked like a zombie filled checker board. I'll post a pic once I get home.

PolyHertz · Mar 2010

If its not broke, don't fix it is my stance on updating drivers. Last time that happened was when playing the new Prince of Persia (which was an awesome game btw, sad that the dlc never came to pc

). The screen would go solid black when bosses performed certain moves, but the buttons you had to press to counter would still appear. Havn't played many pc games sense then.

3DLee · Mar 2010

I almost updated to them a few days ago but didn't have the time. I use EVGA's Precision tool to keep my fans at 85% though, so I would have been ok. Hopefully nVidia sorts this out quickly, as I heard the drivers were quite good otherwise.

ErichWK · Mar 2010

Well this may explain why my Bad Company 2 games have been going all white.. how do you roll back your drivers?

editt* Nevermind! They have detailed explanation how! Thanks!

NathanA · Mar 2010

Thanks for the heads up OP, just installed these drivers last night... rolling back now. Computer blowin up right now would really suck... course can't think of when it wouldn't :P

metalliandy · Mar 2010

3DLee wrote: »

I almost updated to them a few days ago but didn't have the time. I use EVGA's Precision tool to keep my fans at 85% though, so I would have been ok. Hopefully nVidia sorts this out quickly, as I heard the drivers were quite good otherwise.

i had the bad drivers installed and set the fan to 100% through the nvidia system tools and did a little test.
The odd thing was even though the fan was manually set to 100% the temp was 15deg higher with the 196.75 then the same section of the game with the old drivers.
odd.

Beware of NVIDIA 196.75 Driver update

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