Nvidia on GeForce graphics drivers bug: we are aware of the issue

The company asks that its customers remove the faulty 196.75 graphics drivers and upgrade to the latest package
  • (IDG News Service)
  • — 18 March, 2010 10:05

Nvidia on Wednesday asked customers to remove drivers that caused its GeForce graphics cards to overheat, which ultimately crashed some PCs.

Nvidia acknowledged on its support site that customers had problems with the 196.75 package of GeForce drivers. Nvidia is asking customers to remove the faulty driver package and upgrade to the latest package, which is 197.13.

"Nvidia is aware that some customers have reported fan speed issues after installing 196.75 drivers from Nvidia's website. Nvidia has removed these drivers and asked its partners to also remove the drivers," Nvidia wrote on another support site.

As an alternative, customers could roll back to the older versions of graphics drivers, Nvidia said. "In almost every case reverting back to our 196.21 driver immediately resolved their issues," Nvidia wrote.

The GPU drivers need to be changed for the Windows 7, Vista and XP operating systems. The fix applies to the GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, 200, and 300 series desktop GPUs and Ion desktop GPUs.

Customers on an Nvidia forum reported system crashes due to overheating of graphics cards. On another Nvidia forum, users reported that automatic fan speed control would not work and Windows would hang when they played games.

Keep up with the latest tech news, reviews and previews by subscribing to the PC World newsletter.

Agam Shah

IDG News Service
Topics: pc components, graphics cards, nvidia
Comments are now closed.

Best Deals on PCWorld

PC ComponentsView all »
Desktop PCsView all »
NotebooksView all »
Servers & StorageView all »
Software and ServicesView all »