Atomic Systems

I've given in and decided to finally ask for help with a problem I've got and i'm hoping there's a simple solution or something I'm missing out.

Long story short, I haven't got an amazing computer (dual core 1.83Ghz i think, 2gb ram, Geforce 210 graphics card.. i know, it's probably got hamsters in a wheel powering it somewhere..) but I was quite happy running TS2010 without TSX and achieving a good frame rate. But, I decided to update my graphic card's drivers for the first time in a year, Biiiiig mistake! First issue is that doing this driver update meant that running in 1440x900 was no longer supported by the card, I have no idea why.. even when I would make a custom resolution through the Nvidia panel it just didn't look right. but the biggest issue was that all the sudden my audio had become super stuttery too and this was without even playing any games, just using my computer for browsing and listening to music on last.fm. Panicked and immediately done a system restore to the day before, which has restored my graphics to the original drivers which I'm happy with, but i've still got this stutter.

Looking into it more I realised that ever since i done this driver update that i'm losing just over 1gb of ram permanently on the system processes when looking at the task manager, even though I barely have anything running, even in the background. And of course this has had a knock on affect to RW now that i'm always getting frame rates at a crawling speed, even with eeeeeverything set to the lowest (it says 14fps but it never displays lower, even when i can count the FPS myself!)

I'm a bit bewildered to what to do, I've done system restores, driver rollbacks etc and the problem remains, I can't do a full computer reinstall either as I've got no windows CDs and would loose too much software that I can't find disks for again (I'm skint before anyone says buy a hard drive to back up!) Is there anything i'm missing out on? Or is my computer completely stuffed?

Hello fella what version of drivers did you update to and what where they beforehand? Im guessing you may have installed an audio driver within the package you have updated? I have had to use a driver cleaner to completely remove previos drivers and then go to default graphics before installing a working version again. How did you update the drivers (nvidia site or somewhwere like 3dguru?) May be worth checking to see if they support your card. Hope this of some help . cheers M

i honestly couldn't say off the top of my head what the original drivers were but i'll find out when I get back on the PC later, is there any free driver cleaner software out there? because I'm thinking the issue could be that it's running double drivers, especially as the graphics card has a HDMI port which i know can be tedious at times! I installed the new drivers through the Nvidia website at first, then tried again a 2nd time using the windows driver update scan too which both resulted in the same problem of unusable graphic resolutions

I think you may have some old remnants of drivers there to. I get all mine from nvidia site or 3d guru.com dont use the windows update option as it can be messy. Look on the 3dguru site they normally have driver cleaners there or majorgeeks.com. Had a look on the nvidia forums for you some people have problems with version 275.38 with audio I believe. Cheers

i've managed to get hold of Driver sweeper (not that i have a clue what i'm doing..) and looked up on the versions i'm running. the original driver is 260.99 and the new one is 280.26, I'm quite happy running the 260.99 driver if i'm honest, just done the update as it was suggested on here to make sure all drivers are up to date haha. how would I go about working out what's left of the newer drivers on my system through Driver Sweeper? Sorry for not being very computer literate! I'm a mac man, so much easier to deal with!

right, i've toy'd with driver sweeper and it pretty much took off all my nvidia drivers completely, and everything else it found including audio, so I reinstalled the legacy 260.99 driver to get me working again and the problem still remains

Hmm. There is a utility called procmon you can use to see what is using all your resources. I cant remember where I downloaded it but google it . Did you remove the card from its slot and reseat it? I have had problems where I had to do this.The link below is a youtube link how to use procmon.When you went on windows update did it update lots of things?




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy4kB6v97_M

see what downloading the latest drivers at guru3d.com does for you. Vers 285.38 If that doesnt do anything try procmon to see what is dragging your pc down. It sounds as if you have something running with very heavy resources.

funnily enough i did remove the card and reseat it (wanted to find out what the card was for definite!) could this have caused the issues? I'm looking at Procmon now but I'm a bit confused as the video suggests finding what happens when you run a program, but with me it's an issue that's always at least 50% of my ram with whatever I'm doing. So baffled

I personally would remove the card and reseat it then load the latest drivers.You definitely have something running that is very hungry. Have you done a scan for malware? download rkill.exe run it then download and run something like malwarebytes and see what it shows. I had an issue similar where a process was running and wouldnt allow me to shut my laptop down. Procmon will show it definitely..it may be a question of running it and viewing all the processes and shutting them down one at a time till you find the one! There are some good sites to see what processes should be running as default you can find them on google.

yeah i've done a very deep virus scan with trend micro that picked up a few bugs, but not enough to warrant any issues. it's got to be something to do with the graphic card/drivers as that's the only thing that had changed in my set up, soon as I done that driver upgrade i've had problems since what I don't get is how a system restore didn't revert it all!

I want to run the new drivers but for some reason, they don't let me run my screen in 1440x900. Strange thing I just tried doing, I disabled the graphic card and all audio drivers completely and I've still got the RAM being eaten! What I'd do to be able to just wipe the computer and start again

I'll toy around with procmon and just see what happens, I get the feeling this is a windows system process in the background, just have to find a solution as I use this computer a lot for recording music, and right now that's something that's just impossible to do blah, PCs will be the death of me.

Have you tried going into MSCONFIG and checking the processes there?. If I recall, there is a event log which you may get information to direct you to a particular problem. It should also give you information on what you are running at present.

The graphic driver issue, I use Driver Genius Pro which checks all the driver on my system and retrieves the latest drivers when available. Never had a problem running this. A little puzzled as to why the latest driver has not over written the older version when installed? I have never uninstalled a driver when updating to a newer version, although, it is said, you should do this first. Never caused me any problems! Hope you get it sorted

Best of Luck.
Mark.

can anyone explain why I can't use the latest drivers in 1440x900 resolution? this is the only thing that stops me using them really! I've had a go with msconfig and turned off a lot of processes and start up ones that aren't needed, but I've still got 600mb lost (and that's with running nothing, not even steam ha) really am lost here, but thanks for all the help so far, it's incredibly appreciated.. just hope someone will know what to suggest because I really am running out of ideas

sorry to bump this, anyone have any clues? my computer's unusable now

System restore?