New Nvidia drivers killed my video player, again

[surprised_by_witches]

Hi everyone,

I know this isn't sims related, but it kind of is because I want the latest drivers to be able to enjoy the game, but this is the second time I've installed drivers for my 6600 geforce Nvidia card and they killed my Windows media player.

This is a known problem with players made in 2005, but I upgraded to Windows Media Player 11 (issued in 2007), and it didn't help.

I'm going to look into slightly older drivers and see if that works. I heard there's a reliable set that was released in 2005, so maybe they'd be compatible with my media player?

Last time I just reverted to my old drivers, and everything worked spiffy until recently when all went blurry ... I'm having other problems that I can't solve until I've got the cash, but in the meantime I just want my *$!"*% video player to work with drivers newer than my old ones from 2000, for crying out loud.

If anyone has any advice, that would be great. If not, thanks for letting me vent.

I broke my own rule and logged in from work, but I'm waiting on a work-related thing so had a little time ... and this computer thing is driving me crazy.

I may end up just taking it to a shop. :(

[Mirelly]

Hey, SB. Sorry to hear of your woes. Can you be a little more specific about the Media Player problem?

Has it gone completely, or does it just fail to play certain file types?

I doubt I can be much help. I thought my own media player was busted a hile back until I finally (after a week) noticed the mute button. My searches produced very little to help with troubleshooting that are not bloody obvious ... eg: update drivers yada yada yada ... :o

[surprised_by_witches]

My monitor blinks on and off repeatedly if I try to run a video, and the player freezes. You can exit from it, but the monitor continues to blink and everything loads really slowly.

If I do a hard reboot it all looks OK again.

Also, Quicktime will only play audio.

I have a question into the Nvidia user forum, as I can't believe I'm the only person to have this problem.

My brother has the same video card as me but he has Windows XP professional (I have the home version). His works fine.

[ManagerJosh]

Details on the computer SBW?

[Mirelly]

here (http://forums.worldsims.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=6003&d=1174882929) Josh :D

SB I am so sorry you're in such a mess. The problems you have make no sense, so Geekatoriums (~oria :p ) would seem to be your best choice.

If Josh and Flamey can't come up with an answer and the nVIDIA forums come up blank see what the folks at MATY have to say.

[ManagerJosh]

I'm going to take a wild stab here and blame a combination of issues and not just one in particular.

-1GB of RAM is pretty borderline in my opinion. I have an AMD 64 3000+ system with 1GB of RAM I could do some testing on when I have some time, but I notice sometimes if processes are up there, it can stall out briefly.

-Outdated Drivers. I know you downgraded, but consider upgrading to Forceware 93.71

-Codecs. Since you have blurry video, I will also attribute some of the problems to the Codecs itself. I run a 6600GT on this system I use on a daily basis and I've never experienced some of the problems. If you could describe in more detail what sort of video you are running, I could find a proper codec update for you. In case WMP11 did not install the codecs properly, you can download them here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/format/codecdownload.aspx




Please also take a look at your video card and have the temperature analyzed as well. 6600GTs can get extremely hot so it does need adequate cooling :). You can do so directly within the ForceWare.

Control Panel > Display Properties > Settings > Advanced > GeForce 6600GT > Start nVidia Control Panel > Monitor Temperature Levels.

It should be around 48-55F.


BTW, did you run the DXDIAG itself and test do all the Direct3D tests?