Caution: NVIDIA Drivers 445.75 causing iMatch to crash when opening Viewer

[abgestumpft]

Hi,

Just want to inform everyone that they should NOT install the latest NVIDIA Drivers 445.75 released on 23.03.2020.
In my case they caused iMatch to crash often when opening the Viewer (this will make use of Graphics Card via DirectX)

Details:
In the past days I had often crashes of iMatch when opening the Viewer.
The Dumpf file written always showed "nvwgf2umx.dll" as cause (NVIDIA Display Driver)

After some research I found that first dumps in iMatch occured on 28.03. On 27.03. I upgraded the NVIDIA Driver to Version 445.75.
Haven't found any logs written by graphic driver, but when checking on NVidia page for patch:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/game-ready-drivers/13/349235/geforce-44575-game-ready-driver-feedback-thread-re/
There are tons of complaints from users about problems with that driver (most of them on games, but also Premiere Pro etc..)
-> This is looking like a very buggy Driver.

After I installed my previous driver again (441.87) I haven't had any crashes of the Viewer anymore.

[Mario]

Good info. Thanks for sharing.

In 178% of all cases where IMatch crashes, the reason is an external component, driver, Windows, the user, the moon, air pollution, Corona, non-German beer or worse things... 

[Aubrey]

b]178% of all cases[/b] where IMatch crashes, the reason is... non-German beer....

[werner-k]

Thx! After 3h fight... I found your post... Life-Saver...
Was not sure why viewer was crashing - Rollback to latest NVIDIA Studio Driver V442.19 fixed the problem.
Cheers, Werner

[plastikman]

I had similar problems using NVIDIA GameReady Driver 445.87 (latest driver) after updating to Windows 10 (build 2004,coming out soon) and IMatch 2020.5.4.

My solution (at least it looks like it): switching to the NVIDIA Studio Driver (442.92 is the latest one).

I think this is actually the smart thing to do for anyone that isn't a hardcore gamer. You get less annoying driver updates, and also more stability because these drivers are only updated once in 2-3 months instead multiple times per month (and gamers are NVIDIA's beta testers). Most driver updates mostly bring support for the latest games and fix bugs that often affect these newer games, maybe breaking other things when they're at it).

One can wonder why a GPU driver needs like 5 updates each month to begin with (although Mario is at a similar cycle right now  )

[Jingo]

I had similar problems using NVIDIA GameReady Driver 445.87 (latest driver) after updating to Windows 10 (build 2004,coming out soon) and IMatch 2020.5.4.

My solution (at least it looks like it): switching to the NVIDIA Studio Driver (442.92 is the latest one).

I think this is actually the smart thing to do for anyone that isn't a hardcore gamer. You get less annoying driver updates, and also more stability because these drivers are only updated once in 2-3 months instead multiple times per month (and gamers are NVIDIA's beta testers). Most driver updates mostly bring support for the latest games and fix bugs that often affect these newer games, maybe breaking other things when they're at it).

One can wonder why a GPU driver needs like 5 updates each month to begin with (although Mario is at a similar cycle right now  )

Funny - I haven't updated my NVIDIA graphic driver is very long time - why does one have this set to update automatically?  I play lots of games on my PC without issue using the older driver....

[Mario]

Bug fixes occasionally require an update, even for graphic drivers.
But, especially the 'game ready' drivers from NVIDIA are under constant change to update them and make them work with the latest games. Or improve performance for these latest games. Or get better ratings in some benchmark...

For 'normal users' who don't play the latest games on high-end gaming PCs, the NVIDIA Studio drivers are more than sufficient (as plastikman points out above).
I only update occasionally, especially since you now need to pay attention and disable all the stuff you don't want to have installed by NVIDIA. From their dreaded dashboard to all kinds of background monitoring and telemetry services...

[Carlo Didier]

Problem is that even graphics drivers can have security issues, not only simple functional bugs. That's why havent the latest version may be a good idea.

[plastikman]

Bug fixes occasionally require an update, even for graphic drivers.
But, especially the 'game ready' drivers from NVIDIA are under constant change to update them and make them work with the latest games. Or improve performance for these latest games. Or get better ratings in some benchmark...

For 'normal users' who don't play the latest games on high-end gaming PCs, the NVIDIA Studio drivers are more than sufficient (as plastikman points out above).
I only update occasionally, especially since you now need to pay attention and disable all the stuff you don't want to have installed by NVIDIA. From their dreaded dashboard to all kinds of background monitoring and telemetry services...

Yes. I also switched from GeForce Experience Driver to regular Driver. No need for all that crap. These whole GeForce experience products are advertising. They run constantly in the background with overlays, they are full of telemetry, they require you to be logged in to your NVIDIA account at all time and they advertise new game releases every time you open them.

Problem is that even graphics drivers can have security issues, not only simple functional bugs. That's why havent the latest version may be a good idea.

Only major security flaws require a forced instant update. Most security flaws are very hard to abuse and require local access to hardware etcetera... The Studio Driver line is geared at professionals who don't want to update 5 times each month. Heck, most professional creative shops are 1-2 software cycles behind for the fear of breaking things. I know that up to a few years ago, many small-medium sized companies ran their accounting software in MS-DOS, because those interfaces are for keyboard warriors unlike most modern mouse-centric accounting software.

[supam.viennot]

Exactly the inputs I needed here! Thanks a lot !

I do wish to roll back. Nvidia does not seem to keep archives before 445.87 apr 15 2020. Does anyone know where to find earlier versions of Nvidia drivers (GTX 970)?

[Mario]

I have two NVIDIA cards and I use the drivers from June 2020 (27.21.14.5122). No issues.

[abgestumpft]

This was a special bug in v445.75. I had several versions installed since then (incl. 456.71 and 457.30) without any issues.

[supam.viennot]

Thanks.

I desinstalled every Nvidia App and let Windows choose latest driver.

27.21.14.5709 : all works fine now.