Sick of atikmdag error - time for nvidia?

Just do a search on nvlddmkm and read every thread and article and you will get the idea. and please don't come back and say it's all about Vista after reading a few of them

Thanks, Rebecca.

I'm doing my best not to say it's "all about Vista", as you asked, but I must say I do find it interesting that when I Google "nvlddmkm", the first 25 articles and threads that come up are about Vista. For the most part, they're forum threads by people who only began to experience the problem after upgrading from XP to Vista. It's not until about half way down the second page that I find an article mentioning that the problem does indeed affects both OS's. But even that one only mentions XP in reference to the equivalent problem from ATI. It makes no mention of the nVidia problem with XP at all.

And when I Google specifically for "nvlddmkm XP", I find lots of posts saying,"I never had this problem in XP," or "I've switched back to XP". I do see a few here and there, though, from people who are experiencing the problem in XP. In fairness some of them did lose their weight after it was pointed out that the complainants had improperly overclocked their CPU, GPU, or both. But not all. I does seem there are at least a few legitimate reports of the XP version of the problem in the mix. I realize that clearly you feel there are more than a few, but I can only go by what I'm seeing in front of me.

Obviously, Rebecca, you know more about the history of this than I do, since I'm only finding out about it now. But if I might offer my interpretation, based on what I've read so far, here it is. It would seem that even though the problem might not be Vista-specific, at the very least there are certain features of Vista that act as triggers for it, features which do not exist in XP (Aero, Dream Scene, etc.), which cause it to happen far more often in Vista than in XP. Again, that's just going off what I've read in the last hour or so. I do have to allow for the possibility that all the authors of the articles and posts are smoking too much crack, and that their reports might all be works of pure fantasy. But since neither I nor anyone else I know has any problems with 8800 drivers under XP, I'm having a hard time believing that the lion's share of the issue doesn't fall squarely on Vista.

So even if XP doesn't make you immune to the problem, the evidence very strongly suggests it does make you less likely to suffer it. And as I said earlier, when one thing works more reliably than another, regardless of the reason why, I have to go with the one I can count on. Even putting the the nvlddmkm issue aside for a moment, there's still no escaping the fact is Vista does handle games and other graphics applications with less speed and less stability than XP does right now. That might change one day, and I hope it does. But for now, I have to recommend XP over Vista for anyone interested in gaming or in doing graphics work.

If you're happy with Vista, that's great. I'm glad you have an OS you like. I really am. But for myself and what I do, as I said, right now XP is still the better choice.

Again, thanks for steering me in the right direction to learn more about this. I've never spent any time on the nVidia forums before, and it's been years since I've frequented gaming forums. Those seem to the be the two places where this was talked about the most. As I said, it is strange that it didn't make the news.

There is a reason that there have been so many hardware issues with Vista. virtually all of the hardware and software manufacturers, who had enjoyed the XP status quo, had a major lull in sales--meaning they were financially hurting. Sales of new systems had plummeted. Demand was just not there for around 2 years.

The expenses of now having to spend money to adapt to a whole new Windows OS cycle was looked at as a burden. People began to grumble.

People blame hardware issues on Vista, when in fact it was really hardware manufactureres not keeping pace with changes MS was making, and also changes intel was making, even though MS was letting them know what was coming.

Users also grumbled to discover they need double the RAM and higher speed RAM, to run Vista. People grumbled Microsoft made Vista too secure, causing them to have to click too many dialog boxes. Try blaming the virus writers instead. People grumbled that they had to upgrade their 3 year old computer to run Vista.

In the meantime there was still the ever increasing demand for better more powerful applications and games and 64bit native apps, SLI support and DirectX 10 support, and multiple core processors which many apps and games are still not really supporting.


All these same kinds of grumblings were there during the transition from 2000 Pro to XP and newer hardware. Everytime there are changes, the status quo is disrupted. When Win 98 came out there were grumbles. Going from NT4 to WIn 2000 pro also caused grumbles.

I like progress, even if there are growing pains. Vista is to XP as 98 was to 95 and as 2000 Pro was to win 98. Needed more Ram etc.

For example, if SL didn't run as well on Vista as it did on XP, it was because SL was slow to adapt. Face it SL is a long way from being together.

By the time Windows 7 is available, there will be all the same grumbling again. backwards compatibility will still be an issue and developers will still be grumbling and Microsoft will still be forced to take baby steps to try to please everyone. That is why we still have all these stupid 32 bit apps and why it was safer to go 32 bit with Vista initially. The majority of users like status quo, change is disruptive to them.

MS held back many features they wanted to put into Vista, knowing that many people would need to upgrade hardware and systems and knowing alot of people really don't care. This is similar to how people complain about Windlight in SL.

Just as XP wasn't finished untill sp2, Vista is, as Ballmer has said, "a work in progress."

It took THREE years for XP sp2 and during that three years there was plenty of grumbling about XP, but still the new features of XP were worth the trouble of dumping 2000Pro and the same is true of Vista.

Vista is actually far more stable and secure and full of features, then XP.....it was the hardware and app issues that made things unstable...not Vista itself. This was because other companys find it hard to keep up with MS. Vista boots up much faster then XP, because of hardware priortization, even though it loads much more stuff. Gone are some very annoying things about XP, such as how XP makes it hard to know when it is finshed booting or how it bluescreens on issues, causing lost data or how easy it is to break into and infect with keyloggers etc. problems with wireless etc. Vista sp1 has made the new security and the TDR feature less intrusive, then before and this first Service Pack has few issues, compared to XP sp1, which was a very poor service pack, to say the least. Vista's sp1 also came out much quicker then XP sp1.

The TDR thing, is a feature of Vista to prevent bluescreens. Its a great feature. It means that even if a fatal hardware error happens, the computer itself can recover. Unfortunatley the hardware drivers took a long time to come out to accomodate this, so this feature would fail or would cycle and hardware issues at a very fundamental level were discovered DUE to Vista and it's TDR feature.

Nvidia loved it when people blamed their problem on Vista.

Anyway direct X 10 means better games and Aero means a nicer desktop with more feature and the updating is superior and less intrusive and if you use MS One Care instead of norton macafee and trend etc......security is really a pleasure.

Soon we will have the new browser and all the plans MS has for Vista which will be continued in Windows 7 will change alot of things and enable all kinds of new features. In the meantime hardware and app companies need to stop fighting with each other and MS and go with the flow, because Vista is here to stay.

Thanks for the insight, Rebecca. I don't agree with every last point, since my experience has been different from yours, but I don't mind agreeing to disagree about those things. Overall, what you're saying does make a lot of sense to me.

I still can't justify Vista at this time, but I do sincerely hope you're right that it will get better.