Nvidia Issues?

I have a Vista PC running an Nvidia8600M graphics card. The last two times I logged into sl, my screen flickered and then my PC crashed. When I turned my machine back on, the video resolution made all of the screen icons huge, and my computer was almost unusable.

I had the video drivers reinstalled and tried sl again and got the same result.

Does anyone have any idea why this could be happening? I haven't done anything differently, nor have I changed any part of my system. SL worked fine for me until yesterday.

Can anyone help?

Thanks )

If your resolution changed after rebooting, most likely your nVidia driver stopped working, and the Windows generic driver took over. I would recommend the following. This will take you about 15 minutes.

1. Uninstall your nVidia driver via Windows Control Panel.

2. Reboot to Safe Mode. (Tap F8 repeatedly while your computer is first powering up, to pull up the boot menu. Then pick Safe Mode from the list.)

3. Run Driver Cleaner (http://www.drivercleaner.net/ Costs $10, but is easily worth ten times that. NVidia and ATI drivers never fully uninstall on their own. Driver Cleaner is 100% necessary in order to avoid problems. You should run it every time you upgrade, reinstall, or otherwise change your video driver.)

4. Reboot normally.

5. Install the nVidia 175 series driver for your card and OS. (http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_175.19_whql.html for 32-bit vista, or http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x64_175.19_whql.html for 64-bit Vista.)

6. Reboot one more time.

Everything should be back to normal now.

Thank you! I'll give it a try

Any idea why my drivers seemed to stop working all of a sudden?

Any number of reasons and no one can give a good guess why a driver might quit working all of a sudden. If doing as Chosen said and everything works like normal then call it a quirk. If it happens again, then you are probably looking at some of sort of failure..........likely suspect would be the graphics card. Another potential problem could be heat (especially in a laptop running SL or any other graphic/CPU intensive program). Blowing dust out with a can of compressed air would be a good idea (even if your problem is cleared). Just don't do that immediately after turning your computer off.....let it cool down for a half hour or so first. You didn't say but the graphics card indicates you are using a laptop.....get a cool pad to set it on while running SL.

In addition to Peggy's good advice, here's one more potential cause. Are you using Vista's Aero?

If so, I'd suggest turning it off. It doesn't play nice with SL. I've never had it lock up the whole machine before, but it certainly caused its share of SL crashes for me, before I realized it was the culprit. SL would freeze, then crash out, then the screen would go black for a few seconds, and when it came back on, Windows would say "The graphics driver stopped working, and has recovered." Since I stopped using Aero, I've never had that problem again.

The obvious drawback to not using Aero is that the Vista Basic theme is pretty ugly, and you can't edit it like you could in earlier versions of Windows. You can go through all the same Appearance settings as before, but they don't end up doing anything. It's really annoying.

But there is good news on that front. Vista Glazz is a free download, which will patch the relevant system files, to allow you to use your own themes. DeviantArt has some good ones, or you can make your own.

Thanks Chosen and Peggy! People like you make sl the wonderful place it is.