Weird pause at log in with Samsung Evo and NVidia drivers (Solved!)

[Carfax83]

I've been meaning to post about this for a while, but I didn't for some reason; probably because it was so minor. I've already found one problem between my Samsung 840 Evo 1TB SSD and NVidia drivers, wherein having the Samsung Magician software running would cause games to not run in full screen mode. Others have had this problem as well.

This other problem though, is a small pause after doing a cold boot right at the log in screen. The pause lasts about 3 or 4 seconds, in which the entire screen locks up and doesn't accept any input.

I know it's tied to NVidia drivers somehow, because I don't get this problem with the standard Microsoft drivers.. It also only occurs on cold boots, but not on restarts.. I get this problem with or without Samsung Magician enabled at start up.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I've been meaning to post about this for a while, but I didn't for some reason; probably because it was so minor. I've already found one problem between my Samsung 840 Evo 1TB SSD and NVidia drivers, wherein having the Samsung Magician software running would cause games to not run in full screen mode. Others have had this problem as well.

This other problem though, is a small pause after doing a cold boot right at the log in screen. The pause lasts about 3 or 4 seconds, in which the entire screen locks up and doesn't accept any input.

I know it's tied to NVidia drivers somehow, because I don't get this problem with the standard Microsoft drivers.. It also only occurs on cold boots, but not on restarts.. I get this problem with or without Samsung Magician enabled at start up.

If the machine you speak of is the i7 system, you wouldn't have the same trouble as I did with interference between nForce drivers and other MS drivers.

IF ALL the items in your sig are in the same system, that would mean two different NVidia gfx cards -- and, yeah -- that could cause some trouble there. I'd say, off the bat, do a clean install of your NVidia drivers. But I'd also say -- before that, pull one of those cards out of the system unless I'm wrong per the implications of your sig.

 

[Carfax83]

I'll try that later on. You may be right, as I do have three video cards in my system of which one is used specifically for PhysX. That could cause the driver to take longer to initialize the hardware..

My PC still boots up very quickly of course though. What I think I'll do first is disable the PhysX card in device manager, and see if I get the same problem..

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I'll try that later on. You may be right, as I do have three video cards in my system of which one is used specifically for PhysX. That could cause the driver to take longer to initialize the hardware..

My PC still boots up very quickly of course though. What I think I'll do first is disable the PhysX card in device manager, and see if I get the same problem..

I'd say try that, as you said. As far as I know, what you're doing there is possible to make stable, but I had troubles with it -- enough to think of disabling the on-board Intel Graphics 3000. Since I've solved some inter-related driver conflicts, it may work quite well. But I need the ability to assign this or that software to run in this or that monitor.

Look at complexity as a source of errors. The KISS principle. The only way I've found multi-monitor rigs to my liking was an SLI configuration I built. Or -- someone might incline to Crossfire.

For me -- I'm trying to reduce power consumption, and I have a pretty good graphics card -- enough to power AVR->HDTV Media-Center, with another monitor as desktop. But the desktop -- well -- it is favored for games.

And I play my games with the HDTV behind me, which is running Media Center "Live TV." If I want to watch TV, I just go to the sofa and use the green-button remote.

 

[MongGrel]

Personally, I had problem with the Magician software myself and don't use it but have a couple EVOs in RAID on mine in a bit of an odd setup.

Maybe just me but I run better without it.

 

[Carfax83]

I'd say try that, as you said.

OK tried it and no difference. Disabled the GTX 650 Ti in device manager under safe mode, and set PhysX to CPU. Shut down then started..

One thing I'm thinking now is that it might be that registry hack I'm using to enable PCI-E 3.0 on my system. The 3930K PCI-E controller supports the PCI-E 3.0 spec, but not officially. As a result, it doesn't run in PCI-E 3.0 mode unless you use a registry hack that NVidia themselves provided to be able to run it.

If I uninstall the drivers and reinstall them without using the registry hack, then I'd know for sure. But I'm too lazy right now so I'll just wait until NVidia comes out with a new driver and then I'll do the install and update this thread.

 

[Carfax83]

Well I updated my drivers to the 337.81 beta. After installing them, instead of installing the registry hack I shut down my computer and cold booted it and the problem was still there.

So my theory that the registry hack was causing it obviously isn't true.

 

[G73S]

do you by any change have Office 2013 installed? I have that issue of freezing desktop after a reboot. The problem with Office 2013 is it installs its own OneDrive version on top of the OneDrive built into the OS and adds over 20 new registry entries + 4 startup entries. Disabling the startup items does not solve the problem. Deleting all the 20 reg entries manually will just render your system FUBAR. So I stopped installing Office 2013 as there is no way of preventing this and even uninstalling its OneDrive later on does not solve the problem. MS really fucked up with this new Office 2013 and not giving choices to customers of what components they want to install. Even if you have Office 2013 Professional Plus, it will still silently install those reg and startup entries despite you choosing not to install OneDrive.

Only a format helped me solve the problem

And PS: I do have Magician running at startup and never had any issues. In fact, it is the best thing to have a Samsung SSD just because it is so much easier to OP, tweak, and upgrade the firmware of your SSD

 

[Carfax83]

do you by any change have Office 2013 installed?

Nope, Office isn't installed. I'm sure it has something to do with the GPU drivers, because when the drivers are uninstalled, the problem creases to exist.

The next step is for me to remove my PhysX card, but I honestly can't be bothered as it's such a minor issue to begin with

And PS: I do have Magician running at startup and never had any issues. In fact, it is the best thing to have a Samsung SSD just because it is so much easier to OP, tweak, and upgrade the firmware of your SSD

Magician is good software, but I had issues with it and NVidia's drivers in games. Games would refuse to run in full screen mode when Magician was running in the background.

Every so often I fire it up to check whether any newer firmware is available though..

 

[G73S]

Every so often I fire it up to check whether any newer firmware is available though..

Oh that's what I do. you don't need Magician running in the background. The Samsung Customer Service muppets told me when I called them. Even if you enable RAPID, you still don't need Magician at startup because RAPID creates its own startup process.

 

[John Connor]

Get rid of Magician and see if that helps.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Get rid of Magician and see if that helps.

Just a caveat here. I'm not a big game freak. I have driving/racing simulators and flight simulators. An older Fright-Stimulator I still keep "installed" is my XPlane-9, while XPlane-10 had installed separately. Of course, I was told by X-Plane cus support that the 9 version would merely take up more boot-drive space (77 GB !!) but they were both "separate programs" and I could run either off the same system.

The "9" version doesn't even install into "Programs" for the start menu: You just install it to a folder and create a desktop shortcut for it. So I moved it from the Sammy 840 to my only HDD for that system and changed the shortcut. Initially, when running "9", the system seemed to freeze, but I was able to get back to the desktop to see the Windows dialog box for "X-Plane 9 has stopped working/doesn't respond . . . let Windows find a solution . . . terminate the program . . ." whatever.

I may have had Magician running with its sys-tray icon. Later, I would load "9" and everything was great. Fact is -- I didn't even notice a difference loading the scenery files off the HDD, although it took slightly longer to start.

I don't think any of the troubles the OP has with his games are attributable to the RAPID caching scheme, and those drivers continue to be loaded and functioning even when you eliminate "Magician" from "Startup" programs. So it is likely Magician itself. Someone would have to confirm that.

I was just visiting the Egg website again and looked at customer reviews for my 840-Pro disk. Samsung's customer support options are so degraded it almost looks like it is official corporate policy, but this is wrong. The 830 drives were touted with kudos in the community, then the 840's. What would you wonder, if their RMA processing sucks, their customer-support for technical queries sucks, and they seem "unresponsive?"

See, you'd think that a company that had stellar customer-support response would also be looking closely at the software issues with Magician, make corrections and offer them up as automatic downloads (which Magician is well-equipped to do). But with the bad support, you have to wonder . . .

 

[Carfax83]

Get rid of Magician and see if that helps.

Magician isn't running at startup so I'm pretty sure that isn't it.

 

[Carfax83]

OK, BonzaiDuck was correct. It was definitely my GTX 650 Ti PhysX card that was causing this problem.

I guess having two separate types of cards makes the drivers take longer to initialize or something. I took out the PhysX card when I was cleaning out my PC, and I remembered to test whether or not it had an impact on that issue, and sure enough it did.

Without the PhysX card, there was no delay at the log in screen. Also, the boot up process was quicker as well without it. That being said, I am not getting rid of my PhysX card so I guess I'll have to put up with the 4 second delay at log in and a 1 second extra during the boot up process

 

[sao123]

OK, BonzaiDuck was correct. It was definitely my GTX 650 Ti PhysX card that was causing this problem.

I guess having two separate types of cards makes the drivers take longer to initialize or something. I took out the PhysX card when I was cleaning out my PC, and I remembered to test whether or not it had an impact on that issue, and sure enough it did.

Without the PhysX card, there was no delay at the log in screen. Also, the boot up process was quicker as well without it. That being said, I am not getting rid of my PhysX card so I guess I'll have to put up with the 4 second delay at log in and a 1 second extra during the boot up process

I was also having a similar 4 second lockup with my GTX 260 Core216 card on my older windows computer. (The primary difference being, my pause was immediately as the desktop appeared, but prior to the clock tray apps starting. Mouse frozen, keyboard input not accepted.)
I suspect this might be a driver issue, as when i upgraded to the GTX570 with a new driver the issues went away...

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I don't want to rain on the OP's parade, nor on anyone's parade.

I started posting here around 2004 as I became a moddin', overclockin' enthusiast fool. I've gone through a transformation, though.

Keep in mind I'm Medicare-age, and we grow more cautious with the years. Lately, I've taken more than a week to turn something over in my mind before taking the 15 minutes to actually do it and see the results!

Complexity defeats us. I'm currently planning to disable my onboard Marvell SATA controller, because I don't need it for drives connected to my computer. I'm going to disable the onboard Asmedia USB3 controller because I've added a Hoo-Too PCI-E card and USB3 f-panel hub.

You should be able to run up to three monitors from a card like my GTX 780 -- two monitors with lesser cards. If you wanted more -- you'd be best to go "SLI." And if I were going to add another VGA card to my system, it would definitely be the same as the one I already have.

So wherever you can do so, try to turn complexity into simplicity.