NVIDIA Driver downgrade?

phekno

While playing Mass Effect on my PC last week, I alt-tabbed to a browser and it crashed. Apparently Mass Effect isn't good at that sort of thing, but I didn't know that and decided to update my NVIDIA drivers to the latest and greatest. (FYI, I have a GeForce 8600GT, yes, it's old.) Now when I'm playing Mass Effect, it's like the audio and video are out of sync and the video is in slow motion (i.e. running around with Shepard is like he's running in slow motion). I've tried slimming down my PC by un-installing unused software that might be using memory, turning off processes that might be using memory, etc. and nothing seems to help. The only thing I can think of now is that the driver upgrade caused the problems. So, my question is; how do I downgrade my driver? I don't know what version I was running previously. My other question is; is the driver upgrade what's really causing my problems? I've noticed that on loading screens for Mass Effect (when you see the mass relay spinning and hear that throbbing sound) the sound stutters. I noticed that when I played LOTRO, too (i.e. the sound during cinematics was stuttering).

TetraNitroCubane

Not every driver from Nvidia is the greatest. I've seen plenty of people roll back their drivers after installing newer ones, for everything from poor performance to BSODs caused by the newer drivers. I know that the first thing that a game's support FAQ will say is to upgrade immediately, but it's not always a net positive.

It's hard for me to say if there's anything else you might be able to do to keep the game running smoothly without rolling back the drivers - There very well may be, but I'm not familiar enough with the problem to be sure. If you want to roll back, here's what I recommend doing:

(1) Go download Driver sweeper.
(2) Go download the version of the drivers you want to roll back to. If you still have those, great.
(3) Go to your control panel, and the add/remove programs equivalent for whatever OS you're using. Uninstall the following programs in this order, if you see them. If you don't have one installed, just skip to the next one: 1 - Physx support, 2 - Stereoscopic drivers, 3 - Nvidia display drivers.

Note that once you uninstall the drivers, you'll be asked to reboot.

(4) Reboot the computer, and then take it directly into safe-mode (Mash F8 at bootup to get the menu).
(5) Once in safe mode, run Driver Sweeper as Admin.
(6) In safe mode, check off "NVIDIA - Display", "NVIDIA - PhysX". Then choose Analyze. Then choose Clean.
(7) Once that's done, reboot the computer into normal operation.

Note that at this point, sometimes I get a command prompt window that says "C:\Nvidia? (Y/N)" Choose Y if you see it.

(8) Things will be a bit wonky at this point, but find the drivers you want to roll back to, and install them. You should be good to go after that.

As a final note: Sometimes installing new drivers over the old ones can cause funky problems. Even if you're installing new drivers, it's sometimes a good idea to go through the process described above to clear out the cruft. You might be able to uninstall and clean the drivers, install the new drivers, and see a performance boost. But it's hard to say if that's true or not, so it's up to you if you want to go through the trouble to check, or just roll back.

Sorry if that's a wall of information. Good luck, though. I hope it works out for you.

phekno

Downgrading worked. Thanks for the help!