Filed under: OS Updates, Windows, Microsoft
29% of Windows Vista crashes caused by NVIDIA drivers
by Brad Linder Mar 28th 2008
If you were an early adopter of Windows Vista, there's a pretty good chance you became familiar with one of Vista's coolest new features: an automatic crash reporting utility that will recommend solutions if and when they become available. Or to put it another way, if you tried running Windows Vista on many machines, there was a good chance your computer crashed. A lot. Even if the manufacturer had slapped a shiny new label proclaiming the computer to be "Vista Capable."
There's a class action suit working its way through the courts to determine whether Microsoft changed the definition of "capable" to help Intel sell
The folks at Ars Technica took it upon themselves to convert that data into the pretty chart you see above. The number one culprit graphics chip maker NVIDIA, a company that had a difficult time updating its graphics drivers for the new operating system. Next up is Microsoft itself, and really there's no good excuse for that, is there?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Enrique said 9:48AM on 3-28-2008
Can't believe this report came out literally the day that my brand new NVidia 9600GT should be arriving for my Vista system...
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ViviD said 10:07AM on 3-28-2008
After installing SP1 i became BSOD free user(1+ month). And yes, 90% of the time, it was nvidia's fault.
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JayMonster said 1:26PM on 3-28-2008
Interesting... and I guess inciteful. I have been running Vista on my laptop since purchase, and have wondered what all this talk about crashing is since I have crashed exactly once in the 9 months I have been running Vista. But since my laptop uses the Intel 945 chipset and not NVidea or ATI, not am I running Office 2007, I guess that reduced my chances of crashing by 56%
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James said 1:31PM on 3-28-2008
Not at all surprising that MS is #2, when you consider that probably 90+% of the code that executes (on a per-second basis) was written by them. Frankly, I'm shocked that they're not #1.
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Petey said 1:33PM on 3-28-2008
After I loaded Vista SP1, my Dell D630 laptop BSOD'd every hour due to the nvidia drivers (my video card: Quadro NVS 135m). Fortunately, Dell just released new drivers two days ago (R180802.exe). My laptop hasn't crashed since I installed these new drivers.
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Mark said 1:34PM on 3-28-2008
Maybe this will inspire nvidia to get off their lazy duffs and get to producing some quality drivers again. Fire some programmers and get new ones, whatever it takes.
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kojo87 said 2:58PM on 3-28-2008
they really should. they got cocky when the 8000 series became so dominant but now that ATi has the 3000 series they cant afford to be.
and do they how many 9800's do they think they are gonna sell at $600 a pop?
hasta la vista said 12:29PM on 3-31-2008
Yes, NVIDIA's Vista drivers have been horrendous. Almost every beta release broke something that was previously working. I honestly think they don't bother to test their drivers before releasing them.
Tush said 5:38PM on 3-28-2008
Not a surprise. I also have horirble problems with the nvidia linux drivers.
Nvidia, you suck.
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john said 5:38PM on 3-28-2008
100% of the errors I've had on my t61p have been related to Nvidia. It seems the newer drivers are even more prone to random crashes too. Pretty pathetic Nvidia. I never realized that everyone was having my problem.
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Gavin said 5:39PM on 3-28-2008
I switched to Linux because Vista kept BSoD'ing so much.
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Tank said 6:38PM on 3-28-2008
It is generally best to run from your problems. Right, Gavin?
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TheChad said 12:00PM on 3-31-2008
Well, it is when you can't do anything to fix them.
jonnypaul37 said 7:56PM on 3-28-2008
It might not be that Nvidia is messing up, ever think that it's microsoft that might not be doing their job? I have to say, Nvidia isnt the only software that crashes Vista, almost everything does, lets face it, we're in the transition phase between 32-bit and 64-bit technology, there are going to be some bumps, chill out people and quit downloadin porn!!!
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Milander said 8:50PM on 3-28-2008
Never had any problems with Vista or other windows OPs and progs. Probably has something to do with the fact that I regularly update my hardware and drivers and actually took the time to learn a bit about how computers work... unlike most apple fanfucks who buy a computer based on how pretty it looks!
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irlandes said 10:59AM on 4-02-2008
So, Milander, all the Vista crashes are the user's fault? Why do I not agree with that. When I buy a car, I do not expect I must be an automotive engineer to make it start when I turn the key.
My old Dell Inspiron 2650 must be 5 or more years old. When I got it, it had XP, and it crashed several times a day. Linux; no more crashes. It wasn't my fault which your theory implies.
After they gave us SP1, suddenly most crashes went away, which means it wasn't my fault at all. MS programmers can't fix me, only bad programming.
My new Dell Vostro 1000 I ordered with XP, and it hasn't crashed once.
Oh, in regards to the comment about updates, I expect my car to start without all sorts of service bulletin, too.
hnkelley said 8:12AM on 3-29-2008
Actually, what may be more telling is that almost a third of the crashes are from video cards (NVidia, ATI, probably a few from each of the other groups). Make of it what you will, but I find it interesting.
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Tina said 8:15AM on 3-29-2008
Well now I know why my Vista crash so many times in last 2 months. What NVIDIA is doing about it?
Tina
http://www.ekhichdi.com/microsoft/password-support-server-migration-help
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Nicholas said 8:16AM on 3-29-2008
yup its nvidia alright. I get crashes frequently within games and were getting them frequently on the desktop up until new drivers were released on Windows Update. Apart from that I have had no other crashes with Vista despite the Vista flaming! Seriously though its really pathetic when you are playing an online game like CS or UT and then you can't play for 30 seconds while your graphics card locks up. Heck I've even had one BSOD over this issue! First one for Vista. I do not understand why Nvidia are not fixing their drivers.
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Peter Kirn said 8:16AM on 3-29-2008
I'm not sure about the causation / blame being established here. Let's review. Three MAJOR changes to Vista:
1. Display model
2. Driver model
3. Account priv's model
#1 and #2 directly impact graphics -- and NVIDIA has a huge share of that market.
The crash graph here doesn't say what caused a crash, only where it occurred. It's not a graph of whose programmers are to blame. I think the safer message to take away would be that the OS and graphics drivers were not mature last year ... and we knew that anyway.
I'm finding Vista to be very stable now. I was finding it to be absurdly UNSTABLE early last year, prior to some key updates to the OS and third-party graphics drivers (and other interrelated hardware drivers) with bugfixes. Those problems clearly were happening in the area of greatest change.
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