Freezes because of 320.49 WHQL driver?

I've installed it yesterday when it got released and today my PC froze - twice. Just like that and not during the game - both times it happened while I was spamming on RPGwatch. Some deity protects the site!

I'm not sure the cause is really that new driver, but I rolled it back to 320.18 just to be sure.
I'll post if there are freezes or not tomorrow with the old driver.
The card inside is GTX 560.

I've been using 126.01 without issue. I'm on win 8 though.

I think it's unlikely that a graphics driver would cause your system to freeze while surfing the web, but you never know…

Fwiw, I'm also using 320.18

JDR, there are reports on nvidia forum about PC lockups with this new driver so… It's possible it doesn't cause it, but then again the last thing I did on the machine was nvidia driver update.

sakichop, OS here is win7, x64.
Not moving to win8 sorry - I use a classic monitor, not a touchscreen.

I actually find I prefer windows 8 after getting used to it.

I do have it enhanced with several stardock programs though.

Dunno, if this new update, called blue makes it "friendlier" to nontouchscreen users, I might buy it.

Nvidia cant seem to make their latest drivers work with certain cards it seems.
I had the same problem with 320.18 as that's when the freezes started.

Now are you using Firefox as your web browser, or is this happening when you play games. If it's happening when you surf the web turn off hardware acceleration in Firefox's options.

I make it a point to only update once every 6 months or so, unless the update notes specifically address an issue I'm having. There really isn't a reason to download new video drivers for an older card - the package is implementing support for novelties your card doesn't support.

Originally Posted by Drithius
There really isn't a reason to download new video drivers for an older card - the package is implementing support for novelties your card doesn't support.

Depends what you mean by "older card". You can still get performance boosts through optimizations in newer drivers, and it usually covers several generations of cards. The latest drivers provide framerate increases in multiple games for the 6xx, 5xx, and 4xx series of Geforce cards.

The % is usually pretty small, but it's still better than nothing.

Yes, I got lots of freezing on the last Nvidia Driver, rolled it back to 314.07 and the freezing went away. Luckily the diagnosis for me was easy since I didn't install anything else apart from Nvidia before noticing. This was on a 580MGTX system with win7.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
If it's happening when you surf the web turn off hardware acceleration in Firefox's options.

Yes I'm using Firefox. It crashes from time to time (especially when overloaded with Flash) but it's not a big deal since I can kill it through task manager. Yesterday however it locked not just itself but the whole machine and only reset button helped. Both PC freezes happened as I said, it wasn't a joke, while I was typing a post on RPGwatch - in Firefox. So far with older driver I had no more freezes.

Can this be turned into something good?
How to kill your annoying friend's machine? Persuade him to use Firefox and install latest nVidia driver.

Originally Posted by joxer
Yes I'm using Firefox. It crashes from time to time (especially when overloaded with Flash) but it's not a big deal since I can kill it through task manager. Yesterday however it locked not just itself but the whole machine and only reset button helped. Both PC freezes happened as I said, it wasn't a joke, while I was typing a post on RPGwatch - in Firefox. So far with older driver I had no more freezes.

Can this be turned into something good?
How to kill your annoying friend's machine? Persuade him to use Firefox and install latest nVidia driver.

My computer kept freezing then messing up the mouse cursor. Then lol and behold some artifacts of green also. If we were both smart we would of kept using the older drivers that cause no problems.

In an German IT magazine (the "c't") I read that there are quite a lot of users having serious troubles with the latest NVidia driver - a few are said to even claim that it "destroyed" their card.
And yes, Firefox is involved, too.

It froze again. And again it happened while in Firefox, I was doing so many other stuff and no freezes until I went to post something here. But it's odd as it didn't happen before while I was using this very driver version.

Disabled what couch said, hopefully that'll help. If doesn't, I'll move to another browser.

Don't these new browsers use that newish Directx web site rendering technique ?
I don't remember its name, though.

Dunno but I'm definelty not alone with the problem:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/alie…l-drivers.html

After disabling hardware acceleration in Firefox, I had no more freezes for a day, hopefully that's the permanent solution.

Originally Posted by joxer
Dunno but I'm definelty not alone with the problem:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/alie…l-drivers.html

After disabling hardware acceleration in Firefox, I had no more freezes for a day, hopefully that's the permanent solution.

That happened to me too after installing an Nvidia update (don't remember which one, it was like a month ago). Exactly same problem, computer would sort of freeze for a few seconds and then totally freeze while browsing in Firefox. Not sure if it's Firefox's fault or Nvidia's fault, but I disabled HW acceleration in Firefox and hasn't happened again (it happened almost daily so I'm pretty sure that fixed it, hasn't happened since and that was like 2-3 weeks ago)

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
Don't these new browsers use that newish Directx web site rendering technique ?
I don't remember its name, though.

I doubt they used DX for that sort of stuff. I'd assume OpenCL or something along those lines (CUDA?) but since it's capable of causing lockups I guess it has to be lower level less abstracted work.