System crash???

[Guest]

Several weeks ago I began getting a message that the system had recovered
from a fatal error. Details explained that there was a problem with my
NVidia driver but that NVidia had no solution for this problem. I've used
driver updates in Microsoft but am told that the driver I have is the best
one for my system. The driver I have is NVidia GeForce2 Integrated GPU.
I've looked on the NVidia site and there are certainly a lot of drivers, but
I'm not sure what to use (or if this is really necessary). At the same time
I started getting crash messages, I also started getting a message that my
computer was locked and needed a password to unlock it. Never had this
before. It also seems that Microsoft might have downloaded some type of
security program at some point because I also get messages that some things
were blocked when I try to open some emails. I can unblock them by "clicking
here". I already have Norton 2006 Security System running and am not sure I
need this extra layer. I was told that you should not run two different
security programs. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. (I'm using
Windows XP SP2)

 

[R. McCarty]

nVidia offers what's called a "Unified Driver" - which means it's designed
for use with a wide variety of nVidia GPUs. Part of the decision on which
driver to use depends on whether:
1.) Stand Alone AGP/PCIe card
2.) Integrated Chipset ( & the PC is an OEM notebook)
Many vendors manufacture nVidia based cards and sometimes the vendor
will modify or customize drivers for it's specific models. In that case you
would want that vendor's driver not the nVidia unified.

NIS has a long track record of being a "Problem" application. While I
wouldn't indict it as part of your issues, it could be.

Basically, I would download the latest driver, Uninstall via Add/Remove
programs your existing driver and then install the latest. Driver updates
are important, as issues and problems are constantly being reported and
fixed in later releases.