[MandyLynn]

Greetings all! This is driving me crazy! This is what happened:
I was playing Sims 2 and noticed bars through the sims and objects while the camera was still. Moving the camera made the lines go away and everything appeared normal. I did some research; found a post on another forum from a user with the same problem. The advice given there was to update the graphics card driver. I went to Nvidia's website and had it automatically find the driver for my card (a Nvidia GeForce 7350 LE). I installed the new driver but did not uninstall the old one. The next day I played Sims again and everything was fine. After about 2 hours of play, the menu went away and the cursor barely moved. I turned off my machine, turned it on and tried playing again. This time I was getting bars all over my game (just the game). I then tried to play Guild Wars to see if it would happen there, it did, my computer became un-responsive and I had to manually turn it off. The next few hours are blurry to me because of so many reboots and attempts at making things work. Sometimes my computer would boot up with lines running down the start up screens. Sometimes after booting up I would only get a blank screen. A few times Windows (I'm using Vista) tried to run Startup Repair which always failed. A few times everything would be fine but after sitting idle for a few minutes a blue screen appears referencing to an attempt to reset the driver timed out along with some other information. I must have gotten 5 different kinds of error screens which all seemed to appear at random. Even after Restoring to a date before I updated that graphics card driver I still had the same problems. Then finally it worked just fine. Had to adjust the screen, but everything was fine.

So used the computer last night and today no problems at all until I thought I would dare to see if I could run Guild Wars. It opened to update the game files and within moments the blue screen appeared again. Rebooting in safe mode once or twice seems to have "fixed" the issue. I don't think it is really fixed. Could someone please be so kind as to guide me in fixing this disaster? I really would love to be able to play my games again.

Thanks for reading!

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Installing the new driver before removing the old one was your first mistake (unless the instructions for the new driver specifically state that's it's just a small update and you can leave the existing one in place. But in most cases you need to remove the old one first).
Having them both installed would have caused a conflict,

I'm not even sure system restore can be relied upon to completely eradicate all traces of the new driver files, which is why you're still having problems.

It should never be assumed that a newer driver is something you must have. Look on the official driver website to see what problems it fixes and if that doesn't apply to you leave it alone. You managed to fix your initial problem by simply moving the camera. You should have left it at that.

I suggest you uninstall ALL existing drivers for the graphics card (and any related utilities supplied with it), then start from scratch by installing the original, old driver. And don't update it!

Edited by Grandad Phillip, 26 November 2008 - 06:08 AM.

[Grandad Phillip]

Installing the new driver before removing the old one was your first mistake (unless the instructions for the new driver specifically state that's it's just a small update and you can leave the existing one in place. But in most cases you need to remove the old one first).
Having them both installed would have caused a conflict,

I'm not even sure system restore can be relied upon to completely eradicate all traces of the new driver files, which is why you're still having problems.

It should never be assumed that a newer driver is something you must have. Look on the official driver website to see what problems it fixes and if that doesn't apply to you leave it alone. You managed to fix your initial problem by simply moving the camera. You should have left it at that.

I suggest you uninstall ALL existing drivers for the graphics card (and any related utilities supplied with it), then start from scratch by installing the original, old driver. And don't update it!

Edited by Grandad Phillip, 26 November 2008 - 06:08 AM.

[MandyLynn]

Stupid me was scared to uninstall the old one because I wasn't sure what would happen! Some good that did me. Anyways, so now I can't get my computer to boot up at all except in safe mode (otherwise it is just a black screen). I forgot to mention that I rolled back the driver to the old one. Should I still go uninstall it? If I do that, how do I get it again to re-install it?