"Zakspeed" <thirose@shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:q0eWi.166847$th2.139427@pd7urf3no...
> The latest nvidia drivers for vista has made my pc extremely unstable
> during gaming. i had beta driver 16371 which was very good for playing
> old game like Mafia, and HL2 ep3 ran good, and World in Conflict, and the
> Crisis demo. I upgraded to 16902 and 16904 and now my games are
> unplayable, constant crashed, memory dumps with BSODs. I restored to wehn
> i had the 16371 driver, but still crashes. i ran a reg cleaner and
> defraged and what not, tried the games with AA on and off, lower and
> higher resolutions, etc
> any ideas anyone? maybe any tips on proper driver installs?
> any help is appreciated
>

Um, Valve have only recently released HL2-Episode 2, just FYI. On the vid
driver issue, it would be a help if you state exactly what video adapter you
have, in troubleshooting.

Generally, you'd go to nVidia for the most recent released driver set.
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

Pick your specs from the list boxes.

As an example; I've picked an 8800GTX and XP Pro x64,
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp64_163.71.html

On the left side of the page, there is a link/box for "Driver Installation
Hints". Read these.

Then there are the Vista specific Forceware Driver installation istructions,
here;
http://www.nvidia.com/object/158.42_...tructions.html

These instructions apply to all 150 series and higher driver sets and both
32 and 64 bit versions of Vista.

These instructions are a little different than for XP. It's important you
follow the Vista instructions for complete removal of the old driver prior
to the installation of the new one.

HTH,
McG.