Thursday, April 26th 2018
NVIDIA GeForce 397.31 WHQL Drivers Put GTX 1060-Powered Systems Into Endless Restart Loop
NVIDIA released their latest GeForce 397.31 WHQL drivers yesterday. The new 397.31 drivers came game-ready for recently released titles BattleTech and Frostpunk while also provided support for features like NVIDIA RTX and Vulkan 1.1. However, numerous GTX 1060 owners have reported on the official NVIDIA forums that they were unable to complete the installation of the 397.31 drivers. Users were prompted to restart their systems to complete the installation process, but once they have done so, they were presented with the exact screen over and over again putting their systems into an endless restart loop. While NVIDIA is investigating the bug, GTX 1060 owners are encouraged to roll back to a previous version of the drivers as a stop-gap solution. The workaround consists of rebooting the affected system in safe mode and running Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) to completely remove the 397.31 drivers. Users can then proceed to install the previous 391.35 drivers normally.
Source:
NVIDIA Forums
43 Comments on NVIDIA GeForce 397.31 WHQL Drivers Put GTX 1060-Powered Systems Into Endless Restart Loop
I've just read through first 3 pages of NVidia forums and 10 pages of 397.31 feedback and so far it's the same 4 people complaining about artifacts, ERROR_43 and BSODs, which are a clear indicator of device failure or a driver conflict (judging by timing and wording, the same people complained on reddit). Previous versions of NV drivers were also prone to this exact issue when combined with Lucid VIRTU(now-defunct company with non-existing website).
BTW, my assumption about Windows 7 was wrong, cause the OP symptom description was made up. There was no reboot prompt, and all affected users are on Windows 10 x64. No bootloop, just artifacts and BSODs.
Also, this quote from NV Reddit sums it up well: People always complain about drivers on both sides, but fail to troubleshoot their PCs beforehand or provide details afterwards. I think in the past 10 years I only had 3-4 problems with any GPU drivers:
- AMD APU drivers showed wrong temps (or stuck at constant value)
- AMD Mobile graphics driver completely disabling backlight on ASUS laptops w/ 5000-series dGPUs
- NVidia forgetting to disable eGPU mode in one of their Maxwell drivers
- Timeout detection on NV drivers w/ 700-series cards from 2 years ago(don't remember the exact version).
Those issues were really widespread (and could be replicated with 100% accuracy on the same hardware), but I'm pretty sure that they had way less public attention than 4 dudes with broken GPUs.
Most of the time you don't need them unless its a big release that touches on architectural improvements, and not game specific ones. A good example is the one that introduced Shader Cache
Also, staying clear of Geforce Experience and clean installing each update, is something I can still strongly recommend. This will make you go look for a driver only when you really think you need it, not every day when the popup appears.
Try this,
Unplug network cable from pc.
Copy/install al games on a second volume
Secure Erase your boot-SSD/-HDD.
Install Windows including DirectX and all latest Visual C++ versions starting from 2005 and up.
Install latest GeForce driver and reboot.
During boot, plug in network cable in pc.
Run complete Windows Update and follow all instructions.
Et voila!
Working like a charm since 1999.
Atm running a 1060 3GB
Any way I'll be steering clear of this release just to spare the possible headaches.
sure seems since the release of that malware service called win-10 NVidia has struggled with support , as guys put it now ''they seem to brake as much as they fix one drver to the next ''
I still believe here shortly look foir everyone to drop support of anything under win -10 to if its not 10 its no longer supported . its pretty close to that now . good thing theres Linux to fall back on . matter of fact if it was not for the ease of gaming that's about all Microsoft got going for them . face it if all the games installed and run as point and click as in windows with Linux why on earth woud you use windows ? and Linux is far more open and also free to use even 98% of any programs you may need .
pc gaming is all Microsoft got a strangle hold on everyone to use it/windows with out that they would be done for ..[opinion] anymore I game on a windows pc with a non activated copy [retail] the rest is all Linux after that .
Most recent issue I do recall having with NVidia drivers is startup lag with MPC-HC a couple of releases back. That was annoying.
Anything from software issues to burned motherboards and GPUs.
So, if it happens more than once - it's worth remembering it cause next time it'll save me tons of time.
I have not had any issues with Nvidia drivers in the past few years.
I didn't notice any problems at first until I fired up a movie with VLC. The movie was blocky, de-ressed (if there's such a word)
After updating I'm presented with the same update needed. No restart loop though. Reverted back to the previous update.
Fix incoming
nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4661?linkId=100000002342089
[INDENT]This is GeForce Hot Fix driver version 397.55 that addresses the following:
- After driver installation, Device Manager may report Code 43 error on a few GTX 1060 cards models.
- Netflix playback may occasionally stutter.
- Added support for Microsoft Surface Book notebooks.
- Windows 10: Driver may get removed after PC has been left idle for an extended period of time.[/INDENT]
[/INDENT]