tomb18
04-14-07, 11:22 PM
I've been an early adopter of vista with nvidia products since the RC1 days and a user on XP64 for quite sometime.
Many of the bugs that are seen in various versions are recurring due to some fundamental issues that nvidia has not fixed. Herein I am going to give some some solutions that I have found, and point out how you can avoid some problems. Some of these things ally to XP as well, particularly control panel issues.
3D Settings do not seem to do anything or or not saved:
This is a permissions issue with the nvapps.xml file located in c:\windows\system32. To fix it, right click on the file, click on the permissions tab, and give yourself full control.
You will then be able to save any changes in the application 3dsettings.
Warning! In 101.70 this works. However, there are additional bugs in the control panel logic that cause the following: If you change an option and then later go back to see the settings, everything is ok. However, if you had changed aa settings and then put them back to default when you go back in, you will only see 4 lines of options. This does not occur in other versions of the drivers. If you re-change them again everything will come back, including your other changes if any.
In general there may be other resources that permissions are not set up correctly by nvidia. Disabling UAC seems to make many functions perform better.
Empty Control Panel Catergroies or Empty ntune dialog boxes: or (!)
Nvidia programmers assume everyone has the run times for visual c++ installed on their computer:( . This is however not the case.
You can obtain these at
http://search.microsoft.com/results.aspx?mkt=en-US&form=MSHOME&setlang=en-US&q=visual+c%2B%2B+runtime
Install the one that you need depending on 32 or 64 bit.
Uninstalling drivers or upgrading:
The safest way to uninstall or upgrade, is to go into the device manager and right click on the video driver and select uninstall. Elect to delete the driver.
If you have a driver cleaner reboot and use it.
However, even this will not solve every issue, the most important one is below.
Reboot again, then enter into safe mode by pressing F8 before vista loads.
Open the explorer, and go to c:\windows\system32 and then delete nvcpl.dll, nvmctray.dll and nvsvc64.dll. Reboot.
When vista starts, there will be a rundll error that it cannot start nvcpl.dll. That's good! What happens, is that the uninstall routines do not clean up the registry and vista will autoload the control panel that was installed at some point in the past. You will not notice it unless you try to downgrade from 101.70 to an earlier version and then you see that the 101.70 control panel is still there!
By removing it in safe mode, when you reinstall the nvidia drivers you install the correct control panel, what ever it might be.
Another way is to delete the registry keys
NvCplDaemon, MvMediaCenter and NvSvc in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run
If you don't do this step, you will have a system that has all kinds of problems. THIS APPLIES TO ALL UPGRADES AND DOWNGRADES AT THIS TIME INCLUDING 165.01!!!
ntune
This one I'm still working on...due to the different control panel in 101.70 ntune is not supported. It will work as below, but your normal control panel will then be scrapped.
In the past versions you can get it to run as a stand alone app as follows:
In 100.65 and 101.41, make sure you have the visual c++ runtimes for your OS.
Run ntune as administrator and let it install a shortcut to your desktop.
Open the explorer and go to c:\windows\system32 and copy nvcplui.exe to c:\windows\syswow64.
Start the task manager and go to services. Click of the services tab and locate the Ntune service. Right click on it and select propertiesd. Then stop the service and then go into the Log On tab and select " allow service to interact with desktop."
Go back and restart the service.
Now to execute ntune, double click on the shortcut on your desktop. It should work after this.
Nvidia 101.70 for Vista64.
This is by far the best performing and stable version I have installed. Everything I have tried so far has gone without a glitch. I average 80+ fps in stalker, 60+ in Oblivion and finally Quake 4 is playable, staying close to 60 fps and occasionally dropping down to 35. The trick I think with this version is to be sure you remove all of the files in safe mode and then never install ntune!
It is the first 8800 version that I have seen that allows you to change from sli to non-sli without rebooting. This allows you to use two monitors which also works troublefree for a change! I think it's a keeper.
I will be updating this with more, by editing this message. If you have any tricks please help by adding them as replies. Stay tuned....
Many of the bugs that are seen in various versions are recurring due to some fundamental issues that nvidia has not fixed. Herein I am going to give some some solutions that I have found, and point out how you can avoid some problems. Some of these things ally to XP as well, particularly control panel issues.
3D Settings do not seem to do anything or or not saved:
This is a permissions issue with the nvapps.xml file located in c:\windows\system32. To fix it, right click on the file, click on the permissions tab, and give yourself full control.
You will then be able to save any changes in the application 3dsettings.
Warning! In 101.70 this works. However, there are additional bugs in the control panel logic that cause the following: If you change an option and then later go back to see the settings, everything is ok. However, if you had changed aa settings and then put them back to default when you go back in, you will only see 4 lines of options. This does not occur in other versions of the drivers. If you re-change them again everything will come back, including your other changes if any.
In general there may be other resources that permissions are not set up correctly by nvidia. Disabling UAC seems to make many functions perform better.
Empty Control Panel Catergroies or Empty ntune dialog boxes: or (!)
Nvidia programmers assume everyone has the run times for visual c++ installed on their computer:( . This is however not the case.
You can obtain these at
http://search.microsoft.com/results.aspx?mkt=en-US&form=MSHOME&setlang=en-US&q=visual+c%2B%2B+runtime
Install the one that you need depending on 32 or 64 bit.
Uninstalling drivers or upgrading:
The safest way to uninstall or upgrade, is to go into the device manager and right click on the video driver and select uninstall. Elect to delete the driver.
If you have a driver cleaner reboot and use it.
However, even this will not solve every issue, the most important one is below.
Reboot again, then enter into safe mode by pressing F8 before vista loads.
Open the explorer, and go to c:\windows\system32 and then delete nvcpl.dll, nvmctray.dll and nvsvc64.dll. Reboot.
When vista starts, there will be a rundll error that it cannot start nvcpl.dll. That's good! What happens, is that the uninstall routines do not clean up the registry and vista will autoload the control panel that was installed at some point in the past. You will not notice it unless you try to downgrade from 101.70 to an earlier version and then you see that the 101.70 control panel is still there!
By removing it in safe mode, when you reinstall the nvidia drivers you install the correct control panel, what ever it might be.
Another way is to delete the registry keys
NvCplDaemon, MvMediaCenter and NvSvc in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run
If you don't do this step, you will have a system that has all kinds of problems. THIS APPLIES TO ALL UPGRADES AND DOWNGRADES AT THIS TIME INCLUDING 165.01!!!
ntune
This one I'm still working on...due to the different control panel in 101.70 ntune is not supported. It will work as below, but your normal control panel will then be scrapped.
In the past versions you can get it to run as a stand alone app as follows:
In 100.65 and 101.41, make sure you have the visual c++ runtimes for your OS.
Run ntune as administrator and let it install a shortcut to your desktop.
Open the explorer and go to c:\windows\system32 and copy nvcplui.exe to c:\windows\syswow64.
Start the task manager and go to services. Click of the services tab and locate the Ntune service. Right click on it and select propertiesd. Then stop the service and then go into the Log On tab and select " allow service to interact with desktop."
Go back and restart the service.
Now to execute ntune, double click on the shortcut on your desktop. It should work after this.
Nvidia 101.70 for Vista64.
This is by far the best performing and stable version I have installed. Everything I have tried so far has gone without a glitch. I average 80+ fps in stalker, 60+ in Oblivion and finally Quake 4 is playable, staying close to 60 fps and occasionally dropping down to 35. The trick I think with this version is to be sure you remove all of the files in safe mode and then never install ntune!
It is the first 8800 version that I have seen that allows you to change from sli to non-sli without rebooting. This allows you to use two monitors which also works troublefree for a change! I think it's a keeper.
I will be updating this with more, by editing this message. If you have any tricks please help by adding them as replies. Stay tuned....