here's how to determine cause of BSOD

[3dWannabe]

I just used this useful tool to determine the cause of my first BSOD on Win7-64.

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html

As I'm a bit paranoid, I copied the dump from C:\Windows\Minidump to an identical folder on an XP virtual machine and ran it there - and it showed me the 3 system files probably responsible (2 directx drivers from MS, one nvidia driver)

[3dWannabe]

BTW - for anyone using nVidia drivers, after a bunch of research, the 197.45 drivers seem to be the most stable and problem free (unless you're running a Quadro SLI or something that may require later drivers).

I'm running a GTX-285.

[JohnMarchant]

Thanks for the info and detective work mate

[3dWannabe]

Yeah, I got lured in by the WHQL certified http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHQL_Testing claim on their drivers.

Then I started reading on a number of boards after I got my BSOD.

Graphic drivers are one of the few things that can crash a box.

I'm a bit annoyed they are not more stable. This is certainly going to throw sand on my impulse to get the newest WHQL drivers to 'fix' any OpenGL or CUDA issues.

As more processing moves to the GPU (Fusion 6.1 is a major move to GPU, 3D Coat has been using CUDA for some time now), I can see that this is going to create a lot of problems and finger pointing initially.

Certainly lessens my desire to run out an buy the latest and greatest card also. Ahhhh!

[JohnMarchant]

Yeah i can see your point, always try to have my GTX 260 drivers up to date but maybe i will think twice about it in future

[3dWannabe]

Maybe Newtek could create a sticky for graphic drivers, as they will probably get blamed for a crash?

I found the evga.com forums to be very useful, but nVidia has forums as well as a number of gamer sites.

I just wish there was an 'official' 'this is the best driver version' site.com

But, I expect that will vary depending on the card used (nVidia seems to use one unified driver for about all their recent cards).

Ahhhh, one more thing to worry about.

[COBRASoft]

Thanks, helped me with a BSOD too :)

[3dWannabe]

I'm also wondering, besides the nVidia driver, there were 2 Microsoft DirectX drivers among the 3 drivers responsible for the BSOD.

There's a DirectX June 2010 download:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=3b170b25-abab-4bc3-ae91-50ceb6d8fa8d

I wonder if that would be a good thing to install?

BTW - there's no way to go back once it's installed, so backup!

There are also a lot of settings in the nVidia control panel to enable/disable features such as occlusion. I wonder which settings are 'best'?

This is the kind of guidance it would be useful to get from Newtek, as it's in everyone's interest to minimize problems.

[danielkaiser]

I just wish there was an 'official' 'this is the best driver version' site.com

Try this http://www.guru3d.com/