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Windows 10's Automatic Updates For NVidia Drivers Causing Trouble
Mark Wilson writes: One of the features that has been removed from Windows 10 — at least for home users — is the ability to pick and choose when updates are installed. Microsoft has taken Windows Update out of the hands of users so the process is, for the most part, completely automated. In theory, this sounds great — no more worrying about having the latest patches installed, no more concerns that a machine that hasn't been updated will cause problems for others — but an issue with NVidia drivers shows that there is potential for things to go wrong. Irate owners of NVidia graphics cards have taken to support forums to complain that automatically-installed drivers installed have broken their computers.
I normally spend my time on my computers in the company of a Linux distribution, but since I'm a retired "Windows Janitor", I get bugged a lot to "take a look" at friends/neighbors machines. Since the last version of Windows I spent any great amount of time with was XP, I figured I'd better see what all the hoopla was about Windows 8/8.1. I came into a retail copy of 8.1 instead of $$$ for some work I did on a neighbors system, so I figured I'd grab a spare laptop drive and install it so I could get familiar with it, so as not to come off as derpy when the inevitable calls on 8.1/10 start hitting my phone. The install was as smooth as silk, and the system looked/worked fine, after installing the MANDATORY ClassicShell. The inevitable WU notification came and told me I had 100+ updates, so I turned it loose to do its thing.. Once the updates installed, and a reboot, I logged into the system and KABLOOOIE.. right after login, one of the new-style BSOD's telling me there was a video_tdr_failure in one of the pieces of the Nvidia driver that WU forced down my systems throat.. After some googling to find that MS, in its infinite wisdom, had changed the old "F8" to get to safemode, I managed to figure it out and installed the latest/greatest from the Nvidia website, which made the Quadro FX770M in my system happy... Now I hear that MS, once again, in its infinite wisdom, is gonna take away the capability of permanently skipping crap updates in Windows 10, I'm getting close to the point of heading back to Linux, and telling friends that "if you want my help, you get rid of Windows and use Linux"....
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
Irate owners of NVidia graphics cards have taken to support forums to complain that automatically-installed drivers installed have broken their computers.
That would be 17 posters on the NVIDA GeForce drivers forum. Windows 10 Display Driver Feedback Thread
Interestingly the problem has also been experienced by Forbes contributor Paul Monckton who has done some digging and explained to me that the fault lies in a conflict between Windows Update and Nvidia's own driver and software management tool the 'Nvidia GeForce Experience'.
Many PC components and peripherals come with bundled software that automatically manages driver updates already. PC makers also often bolt on driver update management software onto their PCs (Lenovo is a notable example) which then has the potential to conflict with driver updates delivered by Windows Update.
''It looks like driver version 353.54 [the latest at time of writing] is available only via Window Update,'' Monckton told me. ''The problem is the Nvidia GeForce Experience then tried to downgrade that to the previous version while claiming the previous version was actually newer.''
The problem is compounded by the fact that Windows Update doesn't actually reveal driver version numbers prior to install or warn the user in advance so pinpointing something that has suddenly caused problems can be hard to identify.
Given Windows 10 updates cannot be stopped the most obvious solution is to uninstall third party driver management and hand it all over to Windows Update to avoid clashes. This potentially simplifies matters by providing an all-in-one update service, but it does mean taking away control from specialist companies over their own products.
Windows 10 Automatic Updates Start Causing Problems
Control Panel -> System -> Hardware tab -> Device Installation Settings
Then just set it to "Never install driver software from Windows Update."
Well, shit. Someone else informed me that the option to disable updating of drivers is ONLY when you insert new hardware. So, you typically wouldn't want to disable this.
It looks like this may still be an issue then. Damn, that's a really misleading setting name. Sorry for the misinformation.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.