PC gamers -- do not download NVIDIA v44.03 drivers! (1 Viewer)

[John_Berger]

I will also be posting this in the Computer and HTPC area since it needs to be there also, but I wanted to warn people here since this is video game related and not everyone who plays PC video games necessarily goes to the HTPC section.

If you have a PC with an NVIDIA-based video card, DO NOT DOWNLOAD THE DETONATOR v44.03 DRIVERS FROM NVIDIA'S WEB SITE IF YOU RUN ANY GAME THAT USES THE NEWER UNREAL GRAPHICS ENGINE!

These games include (but are not limited to):
- Unreal Tournament 2003
- Unreal 2
- Enter the Matrix
- Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield

The 44.03 drivers will crash any of these games on startup due to problems in the driver. Even launching these games in SAFE MODE will not prevent this error from happening.

If you play any of these games, make sure that you use the 43.45 (or earlier) driver.

Although I was able to successfully uninstall the 44.03 driver and reinstall the 43.45 driver on my Windows 98SE system, my Windows 2000 system was not so fortunate and I had no choice but to format the hard drive and reinstall in order to completely get rid of any trace of the 44.03 driver.

The Atari message boards are loaded with messages from people running on all 98SE and higher Windows systems who were unable to play the game after installing the 44.03 drivers. I've already notified NVIDIA in case they don't already know, so we'll see what happens there.

Hopefully, this message will prevent anyone from having to go through the hell that I went through.

 

[Dave F]

Dammit, a day too late for me. I just reformatted a few days ago & updated the drivers last night! D'oh!

The warning is appreciated though. If you hear anything from Nvidia, let us know.

:frowning:

-Dave

 

[Scott L]

John are you positive about this? I'm pretty sure I have these drivers and I play Raven Shield just about everyday. Plus I recently download the UT2k3 demo and it worked without a hitch. What graphics card are you running?

These drivers were made officially public May 14, 2003 on nVidia's website. If it was a huge problem wouldn't we have seen a new driver by now?

 

[Travis Olson]

I have those drivers and don't have any issues with games you mentioned.

 

[John_Berger]

All I know is that my main system (GeForce FX 5200 Ultra) and secondary gaming system (GeForce 4 440, I believe) both started to bomb on UT 2003 and Raven Shield after installing v44.30. If you go to Atari's web site and search for "44.30", you'll see that a LOT of people (myself included) had the same problem and error after upgrading to v44.30 revision but no problems after dropping back to v43.45 or earlier on several platforms with various types of NVIDIA cards.

 

[Allan Petersen]

I've been running with the 44.03's ever since they were released and have NEVER had a problem playing UT2K3 or any other games for that matter.

 

[John_Berger]

Then it must be with a specific type of NVidia chipset or else you just got really lucky. Unless you know for sure that you won't have a problem or NVIDIA comes out and publicly says, "Whoops!", installing 44.03 is a gamble at best.

But - hey - it's your system, not mine.

 

[Max Leung]

No problems on mine.

 

[Graeme Clark]

These sort of things happen with most new driver releases. For most people they are fine, or even help issues they might have been having. For some, it causes headaches.

 

[Eric Samonte]

Thanks for the heads up John. I might have to postpone upgrading my drivers for a while.