Problems with Video drivers after reboot

[Snakebyte1]

Hi..

I'm having some problems with my video drivers when playing two older games: Empire Earth 2 and SimCity 4. I'm not much of a gamer and typically only play from time to time but decided to give Empire Earth a play the other day. It was extremely choppy this time. Previously I had no problems. I recall though I did get a Windows driver update since then so I figured that was it.

System specs: Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT 500MB, Asus P5K-E M/B, 4GB ram, Intel Q9450 quad core, Vista Home Premium 32Bit, Direct X 10.

I downloaded the latest drivers from NVidia (dated Nov 18, 2009) and installed. The game played just fine. Problem solved I thought. However, the next day when I resumed play, the choppy performance returned. I shut down the AV, firewall and other non-critical processes etc all had no effect. I re-installed the drivers and the problem vanished again. I rebooted the PC and, voila, the problem was back. It appears that Windows must be making some change somewhere upon reboot but I can't figure out what its doing. All settings appear to be the same.

So far I have only noticed this problem with games - Empire earth 2 and SimCity. I have not noticed any issues with Windows itself, nor any of my video editing tools.

I'm thinking of rolling back to the original drivers that came with the video cord, but thought I'd ask for advice first before doing so.

Thanks
D.

[fritzi93]

I'd completely uninstall the drivers and software, all of it, run "Issues" in CCleaner to eliminate registry entries, and re-install the latest.

Although my last couple of graphics cards have been Radeons, I've run into problems similar to yours more than once. Out of laziness, I'll try to upgrade the drivers and end up having to do the whole uninstall/re-install routine anyway. I do it in safe mode just to be sure, rebooting in between. Good luck.

[Snakebyte1]

Thanks for the info Frtizi, although I had no joy. I uninstalled in Safe Mode, ran CCleaner and re-installed divers - same symptoms. I've tried driver version 8.17.11.9562, 8.15.11.8635, 7.15.11.8250 and 7.15.11.7453 (what came originally with the card on CD). That pretty much rules out the driver itself as being the problem.

I'm still thinking its Windows doing something, though I suppose it could also be DirectX. I'm not sure if I've had any DirectX updates since I last played. Oh, well, as long as the problem only applies to a game I can live with it. I dual boot to XP and it still plays fine in XP, so there's my work around.

D.