Nvidia Drivers 361.75 Freeze/crash the game.

DahClown · January 2016

Hi,
My game crash when I use the new nvidia driver [361.75] and was also crashing with the version before this one. I did revert back to 350.12 and it did fix the problem. I find it pretty annoying that i have to use an older version to play ESO, my FPS is way better with the new driver release but crash/freeze every 5 minutes or so. Is there a way to make my game work with the new driver, or am i doom to use the 350.12 for ever?

Windows 8.1 64bit
Geforce 660 TI
i5-3570k quad core 3.40GHz
16GB ram

RWKT · February 2016

I have freezing issues with this game A LOT. And 2 other games The Witcher 3 and Mad Max.

I've read that NVIDIA and Win 10 have problems interacting with each other in game-play. I freeze often in TESO, I have to push that windows button to get back to desktop, then I check my Task Manager to shut down the game... and I always see the CPU usage spiking like crazy because of some background *** that Win 10 is doing. I know... I play on a laptop and the PC master-race *** will gaww-haww at me because my craptop only has an NVIDIA GeForce 750m ... but technically my game still shouldn't freeze.

Hey, if it happens on yours ($)... AND it happens on mine(<$)... then there must be a problem that isn't because of the hardware, maybe it's Win 10... maybe it's NVIDIA's drivers... maybe it's both.

Elsonso · February 2016

Are you playing full screen, windowed (full screen), or windowed?

maboleth · February 2016

I couldn't be happier with Nvidia gtx950. Eso runs so smooooth, without any freezing or crashing. Running w10 as well.
I do, however, experience other problem occasionally. It does not interfere with the gameplay though: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/244425/sometimes-eso-loads-on-1-and-a-half-screen#latest

DahClown · February 2016

I run windowed (full screen) and i just formated my pc back to windows 7 having the same issue.

EliteZ · February 2016

There are others on this forum with the same issue - including myself.

If I install the latest driver for my GTX 770, my game crashes within 10 mins of playing. If I revert back to an old driver from September 2015 then I have no problems. However, I am not going to use an old driver and cripple my other games just because ESO doesn't like these drivers.

I am running Windows 10, but also experienced this issue when I was on 8.1

Asmodean · February 2016

Roll back to either 359.06 (which works fine for me) on a GTX 970. Or, others are suggesting as far back as 355.98.

I've already made several posts about this on various threads. The last few driver batches have not been working well in general. From my own testing. This game might be sensitive to driver stability issues. So it becomes more apparent while playing this, in particular.

mega.fatherb16_ESO · February 2016

Same here. Game loads the Zenimax logo for half a second before freezing. Windows gives the notification that the driver "crashed and recovered".

Windows 10
GTX 660TI 361.75
i5 3570k
24GB DDR3

Edit: just did a ddu reinstall (feb 15 04:49 edt) of the same gpu drivers on an unrelated fps drop issue. ESO still freezes on zenimax logo load. Display driver still crashes

Edit2: updated to 361.91. same issues.

Edit3: Running the game in Compatibility Mode (Windows 7) seems to be ok so far. This is the .exe that I changed. Hope this is helpful for anyone at all.
\steam\SteamApps\common\Zenimax Online\zosSteamStarter.exe
Will update with further failures as they happen. Fingers crossed!

Scourch · February 2016

I'm also having a crashing issue. I'll play the game and at no given time or pattern the game crashes and the ESO bug report window pops up. I can play for 10 minutes or an hour, be in a city or somewhere in the game world and it can crash. I will say though it tends to do it a lot more in Wrothgar than other places I've been so far.

Is the issue with the 361.75 driver update or with ESO's latest patch? Just wondering which needs to be fixed first because at this rate, it's really annoying to play.

Win 10 Pro
GTX 970
16GB DDR3
i5 3570k

Junipus · February 2016

Currently the latest ESO patch and newest Nvidia drivers haven't fixed the issue and there's still random crashes.

Currently running the last but one drivers since the newest ones screw up surround and will try it again with default .ini settings after making some changes to help improve FPS and will report back if it's any better.

mega.fatherb16_ESO · February 2016

A possible solution, to quote myself up there:

mega.fatherb16_ESO wrote: »

...Running the game in Compatibility Mode (Windows 7) seems to be ok so far. This is the .exe that I changed. Hope this is helpful for anyone at all.
\steam\SteamApps\common\Zenimax Online\zosSteamStarter.exe
Will update with further failures as they happen. Fingers crossed!

thejynxed · February 2016

Can confirm - getting at least 2 to 3 TDRs per play session, have had one complete system lockup during gameplay using driver version 361.75 which completely corrupted my Windows installation beyond repair (some of the files that went corrupt were part of the group used to run any Windows repair functions & image re-installation) - had to do a complete wipe and reinstall.

Going to try a few different driver versions and use forced settings in nVidia control panel instead of allowing the game to set the options and see if this makes any difference.

Also, the suggestion for the Steam version is nice, but the retail client behaves differently.

Edit: Installed the latest drivers, clean. Forced single-monitor optimization mode, manually assigned PhysX to the GPU, all other 3-D driver settings set to override app settings. Ambient Occlusion off. Changed the game executable to be Win7 compatible and Run as Administrator. No crashes now in two 8 hr play sessions.

Turelus · February 2016

GTX 980 and had this issue for the first time today.