Graphic Board(s)

By James Gaskin, NetworkWorld.com, 07/25/06

Last week I talked about how my video system melted down. Nothing I tried resolved the new conflict between my Nvidia video driver and the most recent Microsoft update. I rolled the video driver up, then back, and rolled the Microsoft update back. The problem remained, and I finally reformatted my Windows partition. There could be a hardware issue since the video board is nearly two years old and needs a fan to keep the heat level down, but I doubt it. I already said "Thanks a Lot, Microsoft" so I won't go through that again. Since I heard from several of you with the same problem, someone should put Nvidia and Microsoft into a room together to work out these driver details.

So I replaced the old video board with a new ATI-based video board. The market for graphic chips seems to be a bit limited today. If you don't like your video board based on an Nvidia chip, you buy a board using an ATI chip. If you don't like the ATI chip, you, um, buy a different Nvidia chip. Or different ATI chip. Then you hope the particular graphic chip powering your board and Microsoft updates are in sync.

After completely updating every driver from ATI, the system works fine. I don't like the Multi-Desk software included with the ATI graphics application suite as much as I liked the one from Nvidia, but perhaps I just need to configure it a bit more.

Many of you wrote to say you've struggled with similar issues. Reader Patrick discovered the Microsoft driver for Nvidia broke the ZENworks management software he uses to control his network. Luckily he discovered the problem before his 50 workstations with Nvidia chips inside downloaded the Microsoft update and all went south together. Since Patrick's in Oregon, they have lots of south to go to. And you thought I made up the "50 workstations" line, didn't you?

Others wrote to say how their struggles began with an ATI-based graphics board, and switching to an Nvidia-based video board cured their problem. Reader Tony almost did that, but he was lucky enough to fix the driver update problem with drivers from his original ATI driver CD. It took him four hours to find it, a half day completely ruined, but find it he did.

Here's my new plan: keep Nvidia and ATI boards, and swap them back and forth as Microsoft updates cause problems to one or the other. Sure that's a lot of trouble, but we should be vacuuming out the insides of our PCs more often anyway, and this will give us a good chance to do so. One hand to pull out the current graphic board, one hand to put in the new graphic board you pulled out the last time, and one hand to hold the vacuum hose. Sounds like a fun afternoon for all concerned.

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