Maximum PC

Hello good people

Every time I reboot, my NVIDIA folder reappears on my desktop. So annoying.

What's happened so far:
Several months ago, BSOD, "your system has recovered from a serious error."

A Microsoft "Windows Error Reporting" webpage opens on my browser, saying "Stop (blue screen) error caused by a device or driver, (etc). Steps to solve this problem:
Download and install the latest updates and device drivers for your computer
Scan your computer for viruses
Check your hard disk for errors, (etc)"

I'm running WindowsXP Home v.2002 Service Pack 3 on a home-built Asus P5Q Pro MB running an Intel Core2 Duo CPU @3 GHz with 3 GB RAM.

I checked HD for errors (none), scanned for viruses (none), and updated the driver for my NVIDIA GeForce 8400 graphics card.

Now my NVIDIA folder keeps showing up. I've played around with turning things on/off via msconfig, nothing seems to work.

Any suggestions?

Also, last week another BSOD. Then my Google Chrome browser started magically shutting itself off for no apparent reason, requiring me to restart it and restore all tabs, time-consuming. Does that 5-6 times a day. Then 4 days ago some NVIDIA updater applet tells me a new driver has just been released, so I download and install it. But that doesn't stop my browser from cutting out and it doesn't stop the NVIDIA folder from reappearing.

I will implement any and all suggestions on whatever symptom anyone feels like tackling. K.I.S.S., keep it simple -- I'm 56 and may not know what you're talking about unless you describe each step for a newbie. I think I'm pretty smart and feel confident editing my registry, but I'm not sure what a "root directory" is and I have no idea how my tennis instructor's facebook picture suddenly showed up in the Contacts on my android smartphone. I never said it could do that. (?)

Thanks,
trailmeister
Mill Valley, CA

It sounds like you just installed the new video driver over the old one. I have never had any luck doing that. This may be causing your issue.
The way I uninstall and install a video driver is like this:

MAKE A RESTORE POINT AND NAME IT SOMETHING INTERESTING!

Download the new driver to your favorite download folder.

Download and install Ccleaner.

Shut off the anti-virus program, it interferes with the install/uninstall process.

Now go to the control panel and uninstall the video driver and say no to the reboot.

Find the old video driver folder and delete it, then empty the recycle bin.

Run the registry section (the blue blocks) of Ccleaner and scan for issues then fix all problems, it will ask if you want to save the registry before doing so, yes to the question.

Now reboot the computer.

Shut off the anti-virus.

Install the new driver and reboot as required.

That is it! It should run just fine. I used this method in XP all the time and had no problems with video drivers afterward.

Nasty

1. Open Start Menu >> Run and type regedit and press Enter

2. Navigate to the following registry path

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

3. Inspect all the values in the registry. There could be an entry which points to some file in the NVidia folder.

Specifically, look for nwiz. If the data for nwiz is

C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\nView\nwiz.exe /install

Right click, modify and add the double quotes:

"C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\nView\nwiz.exe" /install

This normally happens when if you have nwiz set to start up with windows.

I do believe that it should be either under current user or local machine registries same location

Thank you both, problem(s) solved. Back problems precluding me using my computer for a while. Now I'm back on the computer, I'm just standing on my knees so I'm no longer bending at the waist.

Thank you, armyof1one, I didn't realise nwiz was the culprit. I thought I had tried turning off nwiz via msconfig, but apparently not -- definitely TBD on my part (temporary brain dysfunction). Turning it off solved the problem handily. Awesome!!

And thank you, Nastyman, your instructions seem to have totally fixed my computer's instability problems. You're right, I had installed the new video driver over the old one. I'm surprised I didn't see instructions at the NVIDIA download page telling me it was necessary to uninstall the old driver. I'll take the lesson and run with it! After uninstalling the video driver I double-checked Add/Remove Programs to see if there was still an NVIDIA driver installed, and sure enough Windows had reverted to the previous driver that was underneath the newer one. I performed your entire procedure twice, including emptying the recycle bin, turning off antivirus, and running Ccleaner.. until it was evident from what I saw on my monitor that I was running driver-less. Now my browser no longer cuts out, and no more BSODs. It's like a new computer, almost. You're brilliant!!

You're obviously a wizard, perhaps you know the answer to this one. Let's say I'm downloading some photographs off a webpage. The process takes forever because once I right-click on a photo and hit Save, everything freezes for 15 seconds and I hear data being written to my hard drive, you know like as though I had run low on resources and was reverting to virtual memory. This doesn't make sense to me because I maxed out my MB with 3GB RAM, even more than XP is supposed to recognise, but the guy at Crucial recommended it. Of course, they do sell more RAM that way. Anyway, what should be a 90-second task of downloading becomes a 10-minute process. Any idea what's going on?

I truly owe you guys a debt of gratitude for helping me and all the other technologically-challenged tinkerers out there.

trailmeister
Mill Valley, CA

Do you hear a clicking sound when you are running your computer? When you are writing data to the drive, does it get worse? If so, try running the hard drives diagnostic. You can get it from the hard drives website. The software will tell you if the drive is headed for the grave or not.

Have you tried running checkdisk with the /r /f flags? Go to run and type chkdsk /r /f and hit enter, say Y to the question and reboot the machine. Go watch a movie...it takes that long! Do Not stop the process when you have it start or you will bork windows. Now see if your downloads improved.

My XP machine sees 3.3 gigs of ram, I bought 4 gigs because it was so cheeeeap and it gives me dual channel to boot!

Nasty