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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.
Usually the problem is something like, "it isn't giving me the newest driver" or simply the poor quality of the drivers in the first place. (For awhile there, if I clicked on the start button, it would cause my screen to reset!) And a lot of "your driver stopped responding so we turned it off, then back on again."
In some ways, I like that the drivers are being pushed to me automatically, but at the same time, if I'm doing multiple reinstalls in a single day, I've already downloaded the drivers... I don't need them to be downloaded YET AGAIN, every install...
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
...but an issue with NVidia drivers shows that there is potential for things to go wrong....
Given Microsoft's history of buggy Windows Update patches these past few months, I'd proffer that there is more than just a potential for things to go wrong. There is a likelihood that things will go wrong.
.
Microsoft really needs to up its game regarding the quality of the patches it is foisting upon the world.
This is exactly the sort of thing everyone predicted would happen with enforced automatic updating. It is exactly the sort of reason people argued against taking control out of users hands. I just didn't expect we'd see an example of it before Windows 10 was actually released though. For once Microsoft has proven itself to be ahead of the curve. Yay?
While Microsoft Update has generally been something good for Windows (and the Internet) by reducing the number of vulnerable machines, it has not been without its share of programs. There are countless stories of Update pushing bad patches and drivers, and quality-control at Microsoft has apparently taken a turn for the worse in the last couple of years. Nobody is arguing that Microsoft should stop pushing patches or even that the default - especially for home users - should be to automatically download and install the patches. But by removing the user's ability to ultimately accept or decline these patches benefits nobody.
But I guess Microsoft wasn't satisfied with just having a reputation for producing shoddy products that don't work as intended; now they seem to be working towards earning the reputation for creating a product that intentionally goes out of its way to break itself.
uhh, MICROSOFT is the one that is vetting the windows update-released drivers through WHQL program, so THEY are just as much 'at fault' as nvidia is.
the problem IS the forced automatic updates. until that is reverted back to previous scheme (automatic/download-then-notify/notify-then-download/off) this problem WILL REMAIN, and not just for nvidia drivers, but ANY driver, and ANY update for windows itself.
To be fair, it's out in three days. You'd kind of hope that these things would be nailed by now!
disenfranchising users and using them as exploitable cannon fodder to be sucked on!
Who owns and controls my computer?
Some dork in a far away country living out his/her power trips or is it the insatiable, money greedy, total out of touch, higher-upper robot-C?O acting in delusion what needs to be done.
For chrissake, if you want to do anything on the hardware and software I paid for, kindly ask me and give me a choice.
Run fiddler on startup and see who has his dirty fingers in the box in your room.
Is this just a bad dream and when will it be over?
I disabled the update that nags me to install Windows 10. No way, I have a laptop that is certified to run under 8, and I'll be damned if I'm going to spend even one minute in driver hell. I uninstalled the update, and I think I told Windows Update not to install it again. I hid it, or something...I don't really remember. I applied some kind of solution I found from a message board. But whoops, there it is again after a recent reboot. It also demanded I activate Windows again after boot, which I've already done at least twice. Dicks.
This is why I am a late, late adopter. Hell, I didn't even want Windows 8, I only got it because I couldn't find a decent laptop with 7 when I bought three months ago. Let other people spend hours figuring out how to get their systems to work again. Me, I'm going to be poolside, with my laptop that works, and after 2-3 years when I get another one, the problems will have been fixed by then. Maybe.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Um no, Windows should roll back to the working driver when the new one breaks, especially after 25 years of working on this kind of stuff! Anything that brings down the OS is the OS's fault.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
If you want to defer your updates, get the Pro version.
But defer is the word, and they're still forced on you within a few months if you want to keep security updates, even if they are potentially hostile, non-security updates.
I'm not going to say I told everyone so. Oh, no, wait, I did. And so did a lot of other people. Shifting to Windows 10 is a one-way trip to losing control of your own computer, possibly unless you're on Enterprise, because presumably the people with real money won't let Microsoft get away with this.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
"If you're unhappy that NVidea didn't do it right the first time, complain to them..."
Complaints aren't retroactive; the point is to prevent it from happening in the first place. I'm sure you would agree that *no one* should be expected to have the time, resources and knowledge to fix their own car, if the company that made it came by in the middle of the night and made it undriveable.
"...or get a different video card."
Not everyone has those kinds of resources.
If you're a pro, get a pro version and run your own WSUS server on a VM.
Or stick with an OS that works without needing to develop a whole new set of sysadmins skills, like... any previous version of Windows, say.
If you're unhappy that NVidea didn't do it right the first time, complain to them or get a different video card.
And what shall we do when AMD drivers have a problem at the same time?
Perhaps you'd like businesses that paying their staff thousands per week to do CAD work or design game assets to just shut down for a few days until the drivers get sorted out? As far as I'm aware, no-one has yet developed a business model where complaining at a big business that screwed up is an effective strategy for recovering lost revenues from downtime, but if they ever do, it looks like it will be very lucrative in a Windows 10 world.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I only use the NVidia drivers and they work perfectly on Windows 7.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Well, at least its a minor vendor like NVidia. Shouldn't be too many people. 76% market share?!? Then yeah, I guess they should have this nailed 3 days before release.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Windows 10, the best Windows ever:
http://i.imgur.com/5F3zkCC.jpg
With the diversity of systems running Windows, no realistic amount of testing will ever completely guarantee security updates are good. You still need a mechanism to decline known-flawed ones, and a mechanism for recovery and uninstallation the first time you get hit without warning.
In any case, the way Microsoft is going under Nadella, sadly it seems very unlikely they would do as you suggest. They are literally giving Windows 10 away free to huge numbers of people, and presumably they're going it because they want to be more like an Apple or a Google, picking up the revenues on the surrounding ecosystem, not just whatever they can find from the platform itself.
Those automatic updates would be the perfect way to show unavoidable nag messages to sign up for other Microsoft software and services, or those of their selected partners who they believe may be of interest to you, or to install spyware to feed back extra data, or to disable existing Windows feature that used to be free because some commercial interest makes getting you to pay for it a more promising option for them.
Not that I'm suggesting they'd ever do that sort of thing deliberately, of course. Maybe the Windows 7 update that has been nagging users about updating to Windows 10 itself was just an oversight.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
That is how it has been until now, for Windows 10 insider that most certainly is not the case.
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
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..)
76% of the enthusiast market maybe. I'd bet that Intel and AMD have a much larger share of the regular market though. Posted from a laptop with Intel HD graphics.
Yep. Your comment speaks to a typo in the story. It says the driver update broke their computers. When it should have said the update broke Microsoft's computers.
You don't own what you don't control.
It sounds awful. Automatic updates sounds great, because it's a default. And you can turn it off. Windows 10 moves heaven and earth to remove the parts that let you turn it off. How does that sound great to anyone, at any point, ever?
Today "intensive testing" means "Bill in accounts receivable installed it yesterday and his computer seems fine.".
Look at Oracle, Adobe, MS, Google, Apple, etc. They're all HUGE fucking companies who absolutely have the resources to test things thousands of times over. Their QC track record is abysmal. The "standard" now is to have the users be the testers.
Google does this by rolling out updates slowly to unsuspecting users.
MS does it by dumping a load of shit on everyone at once and hoping the blogs sort it out.
Adobe does this by having "Continuous" track and a "Classic" track, then forcing you into the "Continuous" track if you want any of the cloud features you paid for.
Apple does it by denying there is a problem, pushing out a "fix" for it, and then letting half of the users placebo themselves into thinking it's fixed and censoring the other half on their forums.
Oracle does it by chugging a beer, putting its head down on a baseball bat and spinning around 10 times really quickly.
Yup. The current "preview" build, 10240, is the RTM build. For all intents and purposes, Windows 10 is in its final release form.
In any case, given the history of these things, it's inevitable that Microsoft is going to push out an automatic update that massively screws up millions of machines. At the point, the very next update they're going to push out is an update that disables automatic updates.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
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
Always going to the most recent Nvidia drivers has been a risky proposition for years, on Win 7, Vista, XP etc.
Nvidia put out a lot of driver updates tied specifically to newly released high-profile games. In some cases, performance in those games will be pretty shocking if you don't move straight to the latest drivers. The PC release of GTA5 (in most respects a solid release) is one example. Sometimes, the drivers are fine. More often, they cause issues with a range of older applications and games. One recent driver update caused massive issues with .mkv playback, for instance (though a workaround was discovered fairly quickly).
The sensible thing to do is to upgrade your drivers only every few months and only move to versions that are generally recognized as stable and whose known issues have well-tested workarounds. Automatically moving to the latest version is a mug's game.
Sometimes the whole thing goes amusingly wrong. When id Software released Rage, it had horrible texture pop-in issues on most PCs with Nvidia cards. Why? Because id had expected Nvidia to put out a particular driver update in time for launch and Nvidia had gone with a different one instead.
I feel your pain. :-)
Actually, the most recent system-crippling screw-up I had was installing the latest AMD drivers for a FirePro series card on one of our older machines. You know, the ones where you pay a fortune to have roughly the same hardware as a much cheaper gaming card, because of the quality and capabilities of the drivers? Except that this completely routine update, which we were hoping might finally fix the frequency glitches that have plagued the card from day one, took out the whole machine and even made it difficult to recover using the system restore feature.
Fortunately, this was a Windows 7 machine, so once we did have it up and running again, we just made a note not to install that update, and the user of the computer got on with their work the next day as normal. I'm not sure what the answer to that is supposed to be with Win10, if drivers are going to be pushed out via the same compulsory update mechanism. Presumably you're supposed to defer the driver update on every machine that might be affected (or via WSUS if you're big enough to use it) and hope that someone fixes the problem before the ticking time bomb goes off when you can't defer any longer...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Not that I'm suggesting they'd ever do that sort of thing deliberately, of course. Maybe the Windows 7 update that has been nagging users about updating to Windows 10 itself was just an oversight.
KB3035583 is love. KB3035583 is life.
The first KB# I ended up memorizing after having to rip it off dozens of friends and families PCs (and yes the first time each and every last one requested I do so)
About a quarter of those on Pro versions. So much for controlling updates there either.
These directions have nothing to do with controlling updating of device drivers through Windows Update. It clearly says "Device installation" as in it only controls as to what to do when a new device is detected and software needs to be installed in order for new devices to function.
As of right now there is no known way for regular Windows users, even on Professional edition, to pick and choose which new software/driver updates to install or ignore. This greatly concerns me as Microsoft is known to distribute graphics drivers lacking the proper OpenGL support compared to acquiring the drivers from the vendor themselves.
This space is not for rent.
Control Panel -> System -> Hardware tab -> Device Installation Settings
Then just set it to "Never install driver software from Windows Update."
I have a GTX 560 ti, and a couple of years ago, Nvideo released a driver that hosed that particular card with occasional lockups and general meltdowns. Hardware acceleration in Firefox, for instance, would cause the driver to glitch badly enough to require a reboot. Although Nvidia eventually did track it down and fix it, it took quite a few months to do so. I had to monitor their user forums to wait for a fix, and only then could I safely patch once it was confirmed by testers.
My computer would have been near unusable had the latest updates been forced on me. Microsoft really needs to rethink this. Patching automatically works fine as a default for home users, but there HAS to be a way to defer, roll-back, or opt-out of specific patches - especially anything that isn't security-related, like drivers. Patching an entire OS is not as simple as patching a browser. You know they're looking at the Chrome model here, which was actually somewhat controversial when it launched. This is a "we know what's best for you, so you don't have a choice anymore" model, and while it will be fine for *most* people, we've already seen that it can cause problems for *some*.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Note: I saw an AC mention you could turn off automatic downloading of drivers, so I checked it out. Keep in mind my Windows 10 version is out of date, though. so the RTM may be different.
Go to Control Panel -> System, then click on "Change Settings"
Under the Hardware tab, you can click on a button called "Device Installation Settings"
You're then asked "Do you want Windows to download driver software and realistic icons for your devices?
* Yes (recommended)
* No
Unless this changes for launch, it looks like people will have a way to opt out of automatic driver updates, so that's a good thing. Still, damn... they really buried that setting deep.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Currently running Windows 7, I allow Microsoft to notify me about updates; but I block them from downloading or installing. But that is how I handle all software. The only automatic updates that I allow are virus definitions for my anti-virus application, and updates to that application itself are also blocked until I am ready to download and install them.
For Microsoft updates, I wait at least a week after they are released. I read news reports and the alt.windows7.general newsgroup to see what others have experienced with those updates. I try to read Microsoft's "details" about its updates, but those are generally so vague that I cannot tell whether an update benefits me or benefits Microsoft. I reject any Microsoft updates for applications that I never use (e.g., Outlook, Silverlight) and any updates that facilitate installing Windows 10. I also reject Microsoft updates for non-Microsoft products. (Because I bought Acronis True Image, I get notices about updates directly from Acronis. I rejected Microsoft's recently released Acronis updates.)
In all cases, I want to delay any updates to any software on my PC until I know the process will not interfere with other tasks to which I have assigned a higher priority. Microsoft might release its updates on its own schedule, but I will install them on my own schedule.
All this means I certainly will not be updating Windows 7 to Windows 10. Another reason is that I have applications that run on Windows 7 -- some that I originally ran with Windows 95 -- that (1) are no longer being developed or even available but still serve my purposes and (2) Microsoft admits will not run with Windows 10.
Windows 10 (or even a later Windows) might be in my future only when I need a new application that will not run on any earlier version of Windows. Given that I am already 74 years old, my Windows 7 configuration might last longer than I will.
does /. really need M$ stories every fucking day?
We could save them up and post them all on a designated day. Like Tuesday, for example.
Have gnu, will travel.
Seeing users having issues with broken drivers may cause Microsoft to reconsider and allow more control over updates.
Microsoft has had some really bad track records with patches as of late. They've trashed Outlook 2010 no less than four times this year, it's gotten so bad we've had to disable updates company wide. I actually had one use request a downgrade to Office 2007 since Microsoft didn't seem to break that one. After the third mass break this year it's gotten to the point that I outright ban any patch labeled Outlook when I update a system with 2010 on it.
Come on Microsoft, I didn't have a huge amount of trust in you to begin with. Publicly address this chain of fail and promise you'll cut it out to restore some faith.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Perhaps you'd like businesses that paying their staff thousands per week to do CAD work or design game assets to just shut down for a few days until the drivers get sorted out?
Actually I would fire the IT staff in that business for installing Windows Home rather than Windows Pro which has the facilities you need to manage these updates.
There is no reason what so ever that this should affect any business user other than IT incompetence.
Would you mind listing all the things that are for cows? It's hard to keep track.
Not sure why the question mark. What don't you understand?
The category of "optional" updates has gone away, and is instead replaced with the ability to disable driver or application downloads. This is roughly the same in practice, but is slightly less flexible.
The disadvantage with the new mechanism is that you can't pick and choose among the "optional" updates. Say you wanted to update your audio and mouse drivers, but not your video drivers (since you prefer to update them using Nvidia's app to do so).
The advantage of the new system is that you can choose to automatically update what used to be an optional update, and those had to be manually applied, if I remember correctly. Some people may also prefer to have both their drivers and applications automatically updated. It's a bit friendlier for typical users at the expense of the power-users.
I'd like to see that "driver downloads" setting moved to the main Windows Update settings page, where people are more likely to find it.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
game developers don't compile the good games for Linux, just buy them on PS4. PS4 *is* BSD just as Mac OSX *is* BSD.
Right, because Sony is a really great answer to Microsoft. Fuck Sony.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
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.
Automatic updates are fine in principle.
But every update breaks 1% of the things it hits. It's as simple as that.
For home users, that wasn't a problem, because they have one machine so might survive hundreds of updates before anything goes wrong.
On networks, it's a damn nightmare. Even with homogenous environments, you're looking at one thing broken every update, or thereabouts.
The problem with forcing auto-updates is that it doesn't solve the reasons people turn auto-updates off. The main reason? People have suffered breakage like this of previously perfectly working systems. And to the point they get BSODs or complete failures to boot, not just "oh, something's slightly slower or they moved an icon around".
To a professional environment, it's a 10-minute re-image. To a home user, it's days without the machine while they pay someone to look at it, who does two seconds work and charges a fortune, for something that they aren't likely to understand (and if they tried it themselves, might well end up breaking more than they fix).
It's the wrong way round.
I get that you want to keep thing secure, but breaking graphics drivers for EVERYONE isn't the solution there. In fact, more of a risk is some virus getting on the machine and crippling auto-update anyway. I see that as the only way for the virus to survive any length of time - if it allows random patching then it's entry method will fix itself.
So, auto-patching by default doesn't solve the problem there - malware will still stop them happening and so persist security risks. But users who are following all the guidelines are getting BSOD's and crashes and unbootable computers because of the quality of the updates, not to mention the junk shoved into them (malware scanners, adverts for the next version of Windows, etc.). That's just backwards.
The one thing that annoys me about any software is lack of choice. Why CAN'T I have the old start menu back if I want? It's really not that difficult to supply it as an option. I will go out of my way to reintroduce those options if necessary. I don't care what you want as the default, I care about being able to select MY CHOICE.
And that's what they are planning with Windows 10 updates - removing the choice such that you can't stop a known-bad update propagating to your machine unless you spend lots more money on enterprise-level versions of the OS and dedicate a server to the task. Given the number of bad updates pushed out in just the last year, it's a disaster waiting to happen.
I can, and will, find the option to disable it, just because you MADE me do so. If you'd just put the option as default (like it's always been) but allowed me to disable, I could at least say "Woah, there's a dodgy update for Windows 10 making the news - I will stop it until I'm sure MS has fixed the problem". The alternative is really VM'ing it and rolling back - and if I'm going to have to do that, fuck Windows, basically.
It's a nice sentiment, but MS has proved that it can't be trusted to not put tons of junk into "critical security updates" which it doesn't label properly (and puts in adverts for Windows 10 that you then struggle to rid yourself of into such updates). As such, I can't leave them to make the decision as to what's critical for security and should be forced to my machine, and what's not.
And if an nVidia driver - whether or not it can be fixed by a clean install - might just one day get forcibly updated and cock up a machine, that's not something I want to have on a games machine which has only the barest of connections to the net behind a firewall. It really doesn't need all the latest Windows Updates if all it is is a games machine with, say, Steam, and doesn't download third-party shit and just plays games and goes out on a handful of high-numbered gaming ports. Especially if the risk is some random nVidia driver being shoved onto the machine and breaking it (hell, some drivers for nVidia will ramp up the temperatures etc. on you
Switching to Windows 10 now from Windows 7 Ultimate seems like a downgrade rather than an upgrade. Features and customization options have been removed and stability and usability are still iffy. I will wait for service pack 1 and read the reviews over the next year. But unless they give me as much functionality and customization (including setting drivers and updates to be installed when I say so) as I have in Windows 7, I am not going to go for their "free app-oriented mobile device OS that also sort of works on desktop computers".
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
MS seems to have released a troubleshooting tool to block these kinds of updates: http://www.zdnet.com/article/m...