MeanJim wrote on May 12, 2025, 23:14:

RogueSix wrote on May 12, 2025, 20:43:
No problems whatsoever.

This is the first time I've had any serious issue with their drivers. I usually install the latest driver once a month when I apply Windows' updates. I skipped last month though. I had downloaded the driver the night before, which I believe was a hotfix driver. Then the next day there was yet another hotfix release, so I decided wait until things settled down.

Well, it's a strange issue for sure what you encountered. Crashes of explorer.exe and the weird buggy behavior you described would "normally" be attributed more to a faulty Windows install, system file corruption, maybe even a dying HDD/SSD or a bad OC (RAM) but not really to the graphics drivers. BUT, since you have been able to fix your issues by rolling back the nVidia drivers and thus been able to nail down the root cause, it is obviously one of those kind of atypical outliers .

RogueSix wrote on May 12, 2025, 20:43:
No problems whatsoever.

This is the first time I've had any serious issue with their drivers. I usually install the latest driver once a month when I apply Windows' updates. I skipped last month though. I had downloaded the driver the night before, which I believe was a hotfix driver. Then the next day there was yet another hotfix release, so I decided wait until things settled down.

Aaaannnd... after Bethesda FUCKED UP the early access unlock with a delay of two hours, we can add Doom The Dark Ages to the list of games that is working without issue for me. The performance is smooth with ~70 - 80fps on AMD 9800X3D, RTX 4090, 64GB RAM at 4K and everything on Ultra Nightmare with DLAA enabled (no FG). The Game Ready Driver seems to be doing its job .

No issues here either on any of the recent game ready drivers. My 2 year old 4070 has been trouble free. Had a 1080 before that was trouble free too. Win11 all latest updates etc. Once in a while I’ll run DDU and do a clean install of the drivers just to keep things clean I recommend that if you have a driver problem.

@MeanJim

OK, I see. Must be something with your specific config then. I have installed every single 576.xx official GRD and hotfix driver and have yet to encounter a single issue. Recently, I have mostly played Clair Obscur, some MSFS 2020, the Captain Blood demo, the 2016 DOOM (Vulkan, not OpenGL), Tempest Rising, Hogwarts Legacy, KCD, HL2 RTX and more...

No problems whatsoever. And this is no /threadcrap . I'm serious for once.

RogueSix wrote on May 12, 2025, 17:25:
It might possibly help that I'm not using the nVidia App and I'm always doing a manual custom slim *and* clean install, i.e. I extract the driver.exe, delete the bloat, run setup.exe and always do a custom clean install of the drivers only.

I've never used Geforce Experience or the new nvidia app on this PC. I tried GFE once when it came out, and I promptly removed it and never installed it again.

I also extract the driver package and delete the bloat and preform a clean install.

RogueSix wrote on May 12, 2025, 17:25:
P.S.: To the guy with the start menu crash, well, that doesn't sound like a nVidia driver issue at all but more like a dying Windows install or even an impending hardware failure. I'd start a deeper system investigation (including but not limited to virus/malware deep scans ... sfc /scannow and all that jazz etc.).

Well I haven't had a single issue with the system since I built it in January. I had no issues the whole time I was using 572.70. As soon as I installed 576.28 I get issues, which went away and haven't happened again after installing 572.83.

It was more than an just explorer crash, I didn't want to write a short novel about it. The longer version if you're interested; Before we started Reforger that night, I had been playing DCS all day by myself working on and testing a mission for us when we play DCS next.

After we finished playing Reforger, I downloaded and installed 576.28. While the drivers don't tell you to restart after updating, I do it anyway. After the restart, I started DCS to finish some stuff in the mission before going to bed. I had only been in DCS for maybe 5 minutes when suddenly the mouse got extremely laggy as if it were at 10 FPS. I thought DCS had crashed, but none of the shortcuts for task manager worked, and CTRL-ALT-DEL didn't do anything. Then the system froze completely and I had to reset it.

The first thing I do if I have to restart a system without a clean shutdown is run chkdsk on all my drives, and no problems were found. What's weird is that I could open the start menu once, after that it refused to open. I could right click it and open file manager, terminal, etc., but left click did nothing. I could click and start programs pinned to the task bar and switch between them. If I clicked the task view button though, that's when explorer would restart and I got one more use of the start menu. I just happened to use that one time use start menu after installing the newest driver to launch DCS.

Running sfc /cannow was the next thing I did after noticing that was happening since I did have the lockup and had to force restart, but no problems were found. I then uninstalled the 576.28 driver, and installed 572.83 and it's been fine since.

I am, coincidentally, also still on 566.36 (laptop 4080). Haven't seen any compelling reason to upgrade, and the recent driver induced issues have definitely swayed me to just stand pat.

I was okay just installing the drivers as they updated the releases for the last few years, but 2 of the last 4 updates have sent me back to recovery mode. Not a huge deal, recovery mode is easy, but now I won't be installing any new drivers unless they are listed as specific to my 4xxx series. These updates that list 5xxx series updates for a few new games will be skipped. Something tells me I will never notice the difference.

well currently when watching netflix in fullscreen on my ultrawide, the image will shift between zoomlevels every couple seconds making it unwatchable, keeping it in windowed works fine.

I have honestly encountered zero (yes, ZERO) issues with the recent driver series and updated to this one without a prob as well.

Most of the fixes are aimed at RTX 5000 series and I can't comment on that since I'm still on RTX 4090. My RTX 4090 has been rock solid in all the games and demos I have played in recent months.
It might possibly help that I'm not using the nVidia App and I'm always doing a manual custom slim *and* clean install, i.e. I extract the driver.exe, delete the bloat, run setup.exe and always do a custom clean install of the drivers only.

Everything is peachy as can be and I'm looking forward to trying out DOOOOOOOM later tonight EU time. Apparently, id/Bethesda have fucked up and some people are already playing in spite of it being a global launch but I'ma wait until official unlock time cuz I wasn't one of the lucky(?) few (under three hours to go now... I'll live ).

P.S.: To the guy with the start menu crash, well, that doesn't sound like a nVidia driver issue at all but more like a dying Windows install or even an impending hardware failure. I'd start a deeper system investigation (including but not limited to virus/malware deep scans ... sfc /scannow and all that jazz etc.).

MeanJim wrote on May 12, 2025, 16:33:
I've been on 572.70, but I was playing Reforger with friends this weekend and had a couple of crashes saying GPU hang. There are a lot of people having that issue on the forums and it was recommended to install an older driver. My friends weren't having crashes, so I asked my friends what drivers they were using and one was on 572.83.

I decided to try the latest version first, which was 576.28. After installing, I restarted Windows, and then every time I clicked the start menu, explorer.exe crashed. I installed 572.83 and it's been fine.

I'm still on 566.36 (Last December Release)
Granted I'm a 3090 ... but all I read is how unstable are drivers. Imma wait a little longer, just for good measure.

Oh, did you use DDU to perform a clean drivers install?

Prez wrote on May 12, 2025, 15:31:
Wow, New World is still a thing? I completely forgot about it. J.S.Hayes did a YouTube exposé on it (his thing is MMO's) and it was fascinating. Mostly for what was done wrong. Anyone still play it?

I played through the base version with a couple friends and it was quite entertaining. We played to max level but never went back to play any of the expansions or other builds. It was fun as a one-off

I've been on 572.70, but I was playing Reforger with friends this weekend and had a couple of crashes saying GPU hang. There are a lot of people having that issue on the forums and it was recommended to install an older driver. My friends weren't having crashes, so I asked my friends what drivers they were using and one was on 572.83.

I decided to try the latest version first, which was 576.28. After installing, I restarted Windows, and then every time I clicked the start menu, explorer.exe crashed. I installed 572.83 and it's been fine.

Wow, New World is still a thing? I completely forgot about it. J.S.Hayes did a YouTube exposé on it (his thing is MMO's) and it was fascinating. Mostly for what was done wrong. Anyone still play it?

A few bug fixes listed in the changelog too:

FIXED [Monster Hunter Wilds] Random stability issues [5204023]
FIXED [RTX 50 series] Dead Space Remake displays shadow flicker [5241013]
FIXED [RTX 50 series] Colors may appear slightly saturated in games when in game-resolution is below the native resolution of the monitor [5158681]
FIXED [RTX 50 series] ASUS PG32UQXR/Asus ROG PG248QP/Asus ROG PG32UCDM display may boot to black screen [5088957]
FIXED Slight stutter may be observed on certain LG TVs at lower refresh rates when G-SYNC is enabled [5198025]