My notebook PC bugged out last night, freezing after waking it up from Sleep Mode. Before that, it's boot-up flipped out but I was able to revive it. Still.. damn thing would load some services and practically freeze after a few seconds of loading into Win7.
While Windows' Sleep and Hibernate modes have always been sporadically problematic for years, this was different. Even after hard reboot, the computer would drop to about 2% CPU usage and it would take ages to open anything.
I assumed some driver update issue as the cause.
After digging spending quite a bit of time doing various tests & adjustments between restarts, and nothing working, I noticed that the "GeForce Experience" program has had an update available. Checked the update notes...
Sure enough, multiple Sleep mode restore crashing/freezes are listed as being addressed in the update, amongst other things. Not the first time I've had that piece of shit Nvidia software cause problems with OS or programs.
Updated the GF Experience version and things seem to be back closer to normal, without my laptop freezing. Hopefully nothing else was screwed up. Thinking this is what did it. Was beginning to think I'd have to reinstall, or attempt to repair, Windows. :tickedoff:
Wonder if I can neutralize it's dicking with my OS so much, or even uninstall & not bother using it while retaining my essential video drivers.
What does that thing actually do for you anyway?
It automatically senses and downloads needed video drivers.
Back in my day we looked for new video drivers ourselves. Uphill. Both ways. In the rain.
Quote from: Gusington on January 15, 2016, 08:18:57 PM
It automatically senses and downloads needed video drivers.
And occasionally screws something up with it's bugs-ery.
GF Experience also has optional game-specific optimzation settings. Reportedly. I have all that shit disabled AFAICT.
The only thing I used on it before was Nvidia ShadowPlay. For recording in-game footage. But even that has been F'd up and buggy as an acre-sized ant farm the past few months. ::) Didn't even work when I tried using it last month on my Desktop PC.
Quote from: Staggerwing on January 15, 2016, 08:23:05 PM
Back in my day we looked for new video drivers ourselves. Uphill. Both ways. In the rain.
We pushed pixels by hand. We didn't need no high-falutin' video card. You got VGA and, by God, you LIKED it.
I've had the GeForce Experience on two recent rigs and never had one problem that I was aware of...this is the first I've heard of problems with it.
Quote from: Gusington on January 15, 2016, 11:03:29 PM
I've had the GeForce Experience on two recent rigs and never had one problem that I was aware of...this is the first I've heard of problems with it.
Specific driver/hardware related, as most OS crash & freeze conflicts are.
For example, Nvidia lists these fixes for the latest two updates:
QuoteGeForce Experience 2.9.1 Release Highlights
Fixes a Win32 exception while starting driver installation.
Fixes an intermittent GPU power state fluctuation on idle system.
Fixes an audio corruption streaming from PC to SHIELD.
Fixes Sonic and Sega All Star Racing crash streaming from PC to SHIELD.
Fixes microphone recording failure if user presses any other key while push-to-talk button is held.
_______________________________________________________________________________
GeForce Experience 2.8.1 Release Highlights
Fixes a runtime error when installing driver from GeForce Experience.
Fixes a high CPU usage issue on some user systems.
Fixes an issue in recording where there is no audio in captured videos.
Fixes an issue where multi-controller doesn't work with Renegade Ops and two SHIELD controllers.
Fixes an issue where audio from Chrome browser is not captured in GameStream (from PC to SHIELD).
Fixes an issue where MGS V:TPP crashes on launch (streaming from notebook to SHIELD).
Adds small performance improvements loading UI and switching between tabs.
There are some pretty serious bugs in there!
I believe my PC was infected with this malware shortly before I made the permanent switch to Linux and I, too, found it to be exceptionally horrible. It really slowed Windows down (even more than it already was :P). Oh, and it actually made it more difficult to upgrade my video driver, since it kept crashing or otherwise not working.
Quote from: Gusington on January 15, 2016, 11:03:29 PM
I've had the GeForce Experience on two recent rigs and never had one problem that I was aware of...this is the first I've heard of problems with it.
Same here.
Quote from: Staggerwing on January 15, 2016, 08:23:05 PM
Back in my day we looked for new video drivers ourselves. Uphill. Both ways. In the rain.
I'd say this is the preferable (and my) method. Having the latest drivers isn't always best. The industry has been know to release buggy drivers once or twice, etc...
Quote from: steve58 on January 16, 2016, 09:18:49 AM
Quote from: Staggerwing on January 15, 2016, 08:23:05 PM
Back in my day we looked for new video drivers ourselves. Uphill. Both ways. In the rain.
I'd say this is the preferable (and my) method. Having the latest drivers isn't always best. The industry has been know to release buggy drivers once or twice, etc...
The driver updates aren't automatically done in GF Experience. It only notifies you with a little exclamation point on the systray icon. Then you can decide to open the program's interface then hit a button to upgrade the driver, if & when you want, and it does the bidness.
I actually like that part of GFE, along with ShadowPlay (when it's working properly - that thing is also a regular bugfest). And I keep the game enhancing settings all turned off. Definitely not worth keeping it running in the background if it is going to neuter my CPU power and force me to spend a few hours tracking down the cause. Also had it make some game crash awhile back while in the background. :-\
Seems to be doing just fine after the udpate. Doubt I'll keep it running all the time on my notebook, but wanted to make sure it wasn't hampering the thing anymore. :) Hopefully no more serious hardware & OS conflicts.
Unfortunately this Acer Aspire M has an Intel manufactured board IIRC. Those have always been a bit prone to these kinds of issues in my experience.
GeForce experience is a good program. Never had any problems with it personally. It does more than just check for updated drivers. You can use it to automatically load your games with the optimal graphics settings, and you can adjust the game settings from within GeForce Experience, rather than by loading each game. For me the best feature is Shadowplay which is a great video recorder. I'm currently using it to capture all my videos. Its pretty powerful and records in HD. You can use it to record manually, or you can set it up so it automatically records the first 20 minutes of your game session.
I'm glad others find this program useful for their gaming experience. My computer set-up and components don't seem to be compatible with Nvidia GeForce Experience. It has me update my driver for graphics card Gigabyte Geforce GTX 780 Ti and when I attempt that it places all my icons and screen resolution to 800 x 600 when it should be 2560 x 1440. I have to do system restore to get things back correctly.
I'm getting a new video card, Zotac 980 Ti Extreme Amp in a couple of days so I'll determine if the previous card was the culprit.