Those of you experiencing crashes in Vista may not actually have Microsoft to blame. As many of you know there is currently a class action lawsuit going on regarding what Microsoft classifies as “Vista Capable.” Amidst all of the email communication they were required to provide was a list of reasons Vista had crashed.
Of over 1.5 million crashes they had recorded a whopping 479,000 were related to NVIDIA products and drivers. The runner up was of course Microsoft, and some of the others can be seen in the pie graph above. So those of you running Vista and having some troubles may actually have NVIDIA to blame for your woes. These stats were taken sometime in 2007, and I expect that by this time NVIDIA has probably solved many of the issues that have caused crashes for Vista users though.
The slightly unreadable, but more complete list of companies causing crashes in Vista is available in PDF form. Jump to page 47 where you’ll find a tiny grid of text that goes on for several pages, and it even includes software companies in the list.
All of my Vista machines have ATI cards in them, and I’ve never had any problems with the drivers they have available. Are any of you NVIDIA owners running Vista having the apparently abundant crashes?
Ars [via Download Squad]
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Tags: Software, Windows, Windows Vista
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Where did you get this information? I assume it’s from the report you send in when something crashes but could you confirm that.
I use an nVidia graphics card and have not had any problems. Though, I’m using an Intel chipset.
I had one ‘incident’ back in November. I got a pop-up saying Windows needs to update (or had problems with) the NVIDA driver for my video card. WTF!? This system is about a month old, so I shouldn’t haven’t to update the driver again. I told Windows I would do this later. I ended up rebooting again and once more Windows Vista prompted me about the video card driver. I must have clicked on the ‘Don’t Ask Me Again’ options as suddenly I found myself running 800×600 instead of my usual 1440×900.
All I needed to do is go into control panel and simply reinstall the video card driver. I looked through the Device Manager and discovered this machine has a bunch of NVIDA adapters, but I couldn’t find the listing for the video card.
I did find an “Unknown Device”. So I had Windows Vista check for a driver for this “Unknown Device”. Turns out this was the driver needed for my video card and it was installed on-the-fly (no reboot needed). Once this was done I was able to readjust my resolution back to 1440×900 (again without reboot).
Now, Vista has behaved itself since.
The Guru said “This system is about a month old, so I shouldn’t haven’t to update the driver again.”
Why not? Companies release updates all the time. Or should NVIDIA have waited six months after your bought your system before releasing an update? I was unaware that their release schedule was dependent on when YOU bought your system.
I still have the original NVIDIA drivers from when I bought my HP laptop, July, 2007. Every time there are new drivers issued, I try them and they always either crash my system or mess up the graphics in way that I cannot adjust or tweak.
I am not a computer professional, but do know my way around a computer. Both of my desktops have ATI cards and no problems.
I do believe that’s where they are getting the information from. I don’t know where else Microsoft would get information on 1.5 million crashes otherwise.
That’s really odd. I don’t think I’ve ever even had it install a video card driver without requiring a reboot before.
So it does sound like NVIDIA is skimping on their quality testing before releasing drivers.
Not exactly as I meant. I should have said replaced as that was NOT an update being the present drive is from 07/06/07.
That’s really odd. I don’t think I’ve ever even had it install a video card driver without requiring a reboot before.
I am not sure what that was all about. It seemed to be more of a ‘reminding’ Windows this was the driver it was suppose to be using. It was not an update since the present version is from 07/06/07 and I bought the system in October and of course on first run Windows does all the updates.
nVidia offers much beta drivers and many drivers are also leaked. If you use those, you get crashes and BSOD’s. If you however use official stable releases I never had a BSOD…
What I have heard from my friends is that ATI drivers causes much more crashes than nVidia, especially when using multiple displays, tv’s and such.
Huh, I have two computers with ATI cards that are hooked up to multiple displays without any issues, and one Media Center computer that is hooked up to a TV without any issues.
I have been running Vista Ultimate since the beta days and have all required updates to the OS and video card. My video driver crashes often; especially while playing games. Over about a 2 hour period, I’d say the video driver crashes at least 3 or 4 times. Granted, Vista recovers from it, but my in-game character is usually dead by the time it returns (lol). Never had these problems with XP Pro and my video card isn’t the only piece of hardware that I’ve had frustrations with on the driver side. Getting tired of it. I sure wish whomever is responsible would get it together and make it work. I mean, come on, how hard can this be for these people? If it’s an Nvidia problem (which is hard to believe since the reason I have always stuck with Nvidia is their rock solid drivers… I always had problems with ATI), then Nvidia better keep their customers and fans happy by making this work and soon! Heck, at this point, I’d be willing to try a generic, non-Nvidia driver as long as it worked and avoided the crashes.