Upgrading to Windows 10 - think very carefully before doing so

Hi Guys

Just a friendly caution. If you have a Nvidia graphics card or cards in your computer then you may experience display driver stoppages or worse once you upgrade to Windows 10.

I upgraded last Friday (after having a very pleasant lunch - seafood pasta and a couple of pints of fine ale - at a local pub).

At first everything went well - smoother operation, clearer graphics. Then, after about 24 hours, I started getting "graphic driver stopped working / graphic driver recovered" type messages - once it happened while in a dive in a Spit and the screen went black at about 5000 feet AGL and then came back on just below 1000 feet AGL. It also started happening a few seconds after booting up my computer and during some other games.

At first I thought the problem may be being caused by the fact that I was running two monitors and a flat screen TV (all at different resolutions and frequencies). So I tried removing the TV to just run the two monitors - WRONG MOVE!!! When I rebooted my computer Windows 10 went into a type of loop cycle that constantly tried to find and fix problems and restart the computer.

After a while I started getting the famous BSOD with a message pointing to a "nvlddmkm" error. Investigation over the web revealed that this error identifies a bug Windows 10 has with Nvidia graphic drivers. From all I have been able to find on the web, this bugs has no known solution at this time.

Eventually - after a lot more reboots I was able to instruct Windows 10 to revert to the old build (Windows 7). A light blue screen with words to the effect that it was going back to the old build appeared along with a nice little revolving graphic beside the words restarting computer. Wondering how long this would take I did a "google" on my iPad and discovered a number of posts that indicated that the rebuild could take several hours. As it was now getting very late (past midnight) and knowing that I would need to rise early for work, I decided to leave the computer running overnight. On awakening I found the computer still showing the same light blue screen and restarting message.

I "forced" switched off the computer and headed off to work.

When I got home from work I first disconnected one of the remaining monitors and all my joysticks/ HOTAS/etc except the mouse and keyboard. I then rebooted the computer by using the motherboard's stepped reboot (F12) to get into Safe Mode. This got me into a new black and white screen that stated it was reverting to the old build.

Finally, the computer came up in Windows 7 with the Windows standard display driver but no nvidia graphics driver.

I was able to download a Nvidia graphics driver (355.98) and once it was implemented I started to get error messages indicating a possible problems with one or both of my GTX590 graphic cards. After taking the cards out and swapping their positions on the motherboard and also trying each one separately it seems that one of the cards is "fried"
/ "kaput" / "defunk". Is this connected to the Windows 10 nvlddmkm glitch or is this hardware failure something completely separate - I have not got a clue!!!

End result - I have now regained my computer and it appears to be in a stable Windows 7 environment. I have plugged in and reconfigured all my joysticks / HOTAS etc (as expected this included a lot of remapping keys and axis in each of my games) and tested them in my various flight and other games. I am now down to one GTX590 graphic card and am now only running two monitors.

So the lesson learnt - Windows always comes with bugs even when it is a free upgrade. So take care out there as the software environment can be a nasty one.

Cheers

Dev

ps beware of what you may do after imbibing at the pub

Yikes.

I've updated my work tablet to Windows 10 but I've kept my gaming PC on Windows 7. Good move it looks like.

I do like Windows 10, but as always it seems like compatibility issues will rule the day for a while longer yet.

Microsoft really doesn't understand what it takes to get people to migrate to a new operating system, namely: all my old stuff will work on the the new thing without issues.

Same situation here.....have my laptop upgraded to Windows 10 and all seems well, but had been holding off converting the desktop (flight sim computer) for some reason....fear perhaps?? Sry you had to be the guinea pig on this one Dev, nothing more frustrating.........Hawk

Sorry to hear about your woes Dev. So far I've managed to resist updating to W10 and your story boosts my resolve.

I upgraded my gaming pc to windows 10,was asked for my password for a microsoft account that I don't have.Three days and a lot of cursing,now I have to remap my keys/controls for Bos and DCS.Strangly enough,Cliffs was fine.

That is another thing - every MS upgrade requires a remapping!!!!!

I know that MS is always trying to improve the computing experience - and I appreciate their endeavours - but why Oh why do we always end with the 80 percent solution?

And to double my pleasure, I switched BOS over to the Steam version,all is well except for the fact that my skins folder is missing.