- May 19, 2011
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Is it a bit sketchy in other peoples' experiences here too (or possibly dodgy recently)?
I mentioned a while ago how a computer I built running Vista 64 (GeForce 8400GS PCI-E) developed dual-monitor problems (failure to recognise the second monitor's existence, not talking to it at all) after a driver update that came through Windows Update went on automatically because it was marked as important.
Summarising the oddness that followed:
1 - Reverting to the original driver (which I kept separately and tried to install from the setup exe) didn't work because the driver claimed that it didn't recognise the card.
2 - Reinstalling the latest driver had the same problem as it did to begin with (and the card was recognised and the driver apparently was installed properly)
3 - Trying older-than-current drivers (approx v197 and x266) resulted in the original problem
4 - at one point Windows auto-installed a driver and dual-monitor support worked, but obviously the driver install wasn't quite right because WEI gave it a 1.0 rating therefore Aero wouldn't engage. There was also some minor graphics corruptions on occasion, but not show-stoppers.
I had another crack at the problem yesterday (prepared to try point 3 with the drivers downloaded from oldapps.com as nvidia have taken down all their old drivers), eventually gave up with the idea in mind of just getting a different graphics card and reverting to the slightly broken setup mentioned in point 4. As I went about recreating the events leading to that, it auto-installed the driver again, but this time it did it correctly and everything worked. That driver is the same version as mentioned in point 1 and 4.
I know that dual-monitor support for nvidia cards isn't completely broken because obviously a lot of people would be screaming for nvidia's blood and also the other day I only had a small amount of trouble getting a GeForce GT 610 to do dual-monitors with the latest driver.
I also know that DVI support can't be completely broken (I posted this before: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2285062&highlight=) because I've seen it work in other scenarios such as Win7-64 for example on the latest driver. I just wonder what the heck is going on.
I mentioned a while ago how a computer I built running Vista 64 (GeForce 8400GS PCI-E) developed dual-monitor problems (failure to recognise the second monitor's existence, not talking to it at all) after a driver update that came through Windows Update went on automatically because it was marked as important.
Summarising the oddness that followed:
1 - Reverting to the original driver (which I kept separately and tried to install from the setup exe) didn't work because the driver claimed that it didn't recognise the card.
2 - Reinstalling the latest driver had the same problem as it did to begin with (and the card was recognised and the driver apparently was installed properly)
3 - Trying older-than-current drivers (approx v197 and x266) resulted in the original problem
4 - at one point Windows auto-installed a driver and dual-monitor support worked, but obviously the driver install wasn't quite right because WEI gave it a 1.0 rating therefore Aero wouldn't engage. There was also some minor graphics corruptions on occasion, but not show-stoppers.
I had another crack at the problem yesterday (prepared to try point 3 with the drivers downloaded from oldapps.com as nvidia have taken down all their old drivers), eventually gave up with the idea in mind of just getting a different graphics card and reverting to the slightly broken setup mentioned in point 4. As I went about recreating the events leading to that, it auto-installed the driver again, but this time it did it correctly and everything worked. That driver is the same version as mentioned in point 1 and 4.
I know that dual-monitor support for nvidia cards isn't completely broken because obviously a lot of people would be screaming for nvidia's blood and also the other day I only had a small amount of trouble getting a GeForce GT 610 to do dual-monitors with the latest driver.
I also know that DVI support can't be completely broken (I posted this before: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2285062&highlight=) because I've seen it work in other scenarios such as Win7-64 for example on the latest driver. I just wonder what the heck is going on.
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