Game Crashing (Vista/nVidia Drivers)

Well, as you can see in my sig I have a Dell Inspiron 1520 with the 8600M GT. Now, a lot of people suggested that I update my drivers to increase performance, etc. So I went to laptopvideo2go.com and I got the 158.45 driver release for Vista 32-Bit.

However, now the two games I play right now a lot, FEAR and Command and Conquer 3, BOTH crash. Before, they didn't crash.

1. Does anyone know why this would be happening?
2. What drivers for Vista 32-Bit SHOULD I get if these were wrong?
3. If there is no answer for Question 2, then how can I roll back my drivers to STOCK?

 

well, you downloaded a modded driver from laptopvideo2go.com then it ought to have problems when gaming... I'm currently also using a modded driver, and yes I do get game crashes, (COD2 used to work under DX9, now just crashes).
Anyways, it doesn't matter which version of the driver you use, nVidia driver can be used universally no matter which card you have.

So, it's best you find a stable driver that offers both performance and reliability, if you want to rollback to stock, just go to the HP Support and Driver download page and find the driver there, that should be the stock one.

 

Ok, thanks a lot. From what people told me and what I read, I thought new drivers ALWAYS meant increased performance and reliability. Anyway, I might roll back to stock. Thanks for the info. It was better without the update heh

 

158....45? I don't know about that one, but I updated from stock to 158.36 drivers there, and performance increased significantly, and by as much as 20% for FEAR! I haven't used these drivers for more than a week yet, but no crashes yet.

 

i suggest 162.18 for xp, 162.22 for vista. word on the street says.

 

I'm using 162.22 on Vista, and my game performance is improved noticeably. Since we pretty much have the same computer, I'd recommend trying this (like Masterchef said too) before you roll back to stock. Good luck!