93.71 versus 81.98?

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Terry Pinnell - 26 Apr 2007 10:04 GMT

In my post 'Why this intensive Winlogon activity?' a month ago I
described the intensive activity that occurred when I upgraded my
drivers from 81.98 to 93.71, and had some very helpful responses.

I subsequently reverted to 81.98, partly to see if that helped resolve
some performance issues I appeared to be getting. But mainly because
of critical comments about 93x I'd seen. For example, in that same
thread, johns said: "...you might do well to drop back to one of the
8x drivers for your card. The 9x drivers are broke and unstable .. all
of them. I suspect that driver is not able to properly configure for
your older card. I think the last good driver nVidia wrote was the
81.98 driver. It is very stable."

Anyway, today I decided once again to try 93.71, (after uninstalling
81.98 as advised on the website and frequently recommended here). It
seems to have gone OK, although once again there is extremely
prolonged HD activity with heavy CPU usage by winlogon.exe, just as
there was last time. I'd guess so far 30 mins of it, with no sign yet
of finishing.

But, having re-read those adverse comments about 93.71, I'm now
wondering whether it was wise to upgrade again. I'd appreciate further
comments please. It does seem odd to me that these 93.71 and 93.81
drivers should be offered if they really are not reliable.

FWIW, key specs of this 5-year old PC running under XP Home (SP1) are:
CPU = AMD Athlon XP1800+ with 1 GB RAM
64MB NVidia Geforce2 MX/MX 400
m/b = ASUS A7A266-E
BIOS = Award Software with ASUS A7A266-E ACPI BIOS v 1011
System Chipset = M1647 ALiMAGiK 1 AGP System Controller
Buses = AGP/PCI/USB, L2 On-board Cache = 256kB ECC synchronous

Any advice will be much appreciated please.

P.S: The HD is finally quiet!

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Terry, West Sussex, UK

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nospam@sbcglobal.net - 26 Apr 2007 11:01 GMT

Terry, the base Nvidia driver isn't very different from rev to rev.
What's likely causing your winlogon activity is one (or more)
extended utilities (Nwiz etc) that come with the newer base
drivers.

Run MSCONFIG and try unchecking nwiz.exe. Reboot. See
if that makes any difference.

> In my post 'Why this intensive Winlogon activity?' a month ago I
> described the intensive activity that occurred when I upgraded my
[quoted text clipped - 32 lines]
>
> P.S: The HD is finally quiet!

Reply to this Message

Mr.E Solved! - 26 Apr 2007 17:49 GMT

> Terry, the base Nvidia driver isn't very different from rev to rev.
> What's likely causing your winlogon activity is one (or more)
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> Run MSCONFIG and try unchecking nwiz.exe. Reboot. See
> if that makes any difference.

He's correct, it has everything to do with the driver helper apps and
whatever else you have running in the background upon startup and
nothing to do with the driver revision.

Nwiz, nview, nv cpl daemon, nv driver helper service, nv access manager,
you likely need none of those active, though some of those do provide
potentially useful features.

If you do not know how to run MSCONFIG, either run hijack this and post
the output here for comments, or use AUTORUNS (sysinternals startup
utility) instead of MSCONFIG and use it to easily and safely shut off
what does not need to be run.

Lastly, stop listening to johns, his advice will only steer you in the
wrong direction. I say this since I remember your complaint the first
time around, and you were given the correct procedure to fix your PC,
but instead you chose to listen to johns and here you are again.

Reply to this Message

DRS - 26 Apr 2007 13:44 GMT

[...]

> comments please. It does seem odd to me that these 93.71 and 93.81
> drivers should be offered if they really are not reliable.

I've had no problems with 93.81, which I consider superior to 93.71.

Reply to this Message

Terry Pinnell - 28 Apr 2007 12:29 GMT

>[...]
>
>> comments please. It does seem odd to me that these 93.71 and 93.81
>> drivers should be offered if they really are not reliable.
>
>I've had no problems with 93.81, which I consider superior to 93.71.

Thanks all.

OK, in the absence of any evidence that 93.71 *is* 'broken', I'll
stick with it. Would I get any noticeable benefit from installing
93.81, bearing in mind my relatively low specs?

---------

Cleanly installing 93.71 got rid of those hundred invalid ActiveX/COM
entries I posted about.

---------

I'm still very puzzled by all this winlogon.exe activity. I thought
I'd seen the end of it, and I've had a day or two of stable operation
now since I installed. But today (after rebooting, following a mains
power glitch last night), I found that my system tray included the
Nvidia icon. I clicked it and chose 'Nvidia Control Panel'. My PC then
went into this now familiar but highly frustrating winlogon activity.
I understand this means it's re-building the driver data base. Why? It
already did so, taking 40 mins, directly after the upgrade. Anyway,
after about 10 mins, the Control Panel appeared. Having waited so long
to see it, I clicked one of the 3 large buttons, 'Video & Television'.
The winlogon.exe activity is now underway again, and so far after 15
mins nothing else has opened in the Control Panel.

What is going on here please? Even though I'm going to use Autoruns or
Startup Cop shortly to remove it (and maybe any other nv*.exe entries)
from my Startup, I'm curious to know.

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Terry, West Sussex, UK

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