178.28 for Windows XP Watchdog timer fix. Seriously this time.

tmurray · October 25, 2008, 2:40am

The last watchdog timer release. I’ve tested the simpleStreams example (as recommended by Romant, I think?) with up to 2500 repetitions (about a 25 second run on C1060) and it’s worked. Also tested with GTX 280. I’ve tried other watchdog-triggering kernels (very large DGEMMs) and it has worked. Summary: I have not been able to break watchdog at all in this release.

I really hope it’s fixed for everyone now…

mrz3r0 · October 25, 2008, 11:19am

Is there a way to install this Driver on Vista? - Btw. where can I see all those new drivers when they are not listed on nvidia.com/cuda in the download section?

tmurray · October 26, 2008, 4:33am

This is a WinXP only release (as it fixes a WinXP specific bug). It should be on CUDA Zone on Monday morning, but I figured I should post it here as soon as it could be downloaded.

Romant · October 26, 2008, 9:32am

Looks like it is really fixed now. Many many thanks for your patience!

omon · October 27, 2008, 6:38am

Thank you very much. Seriously this time.

And what perspective about watchdog problem for primary card?

tmurray · October 27, 2008, 7:27am

There will never be a way to disable the watchdog timer for the primary display device except in Linux when you boot directly to console.

tjhb · October 30, 2008, 10:35pm

Have these builds been removed now? (Always “File not found”.)

tmurray · November 7, 2008, 10:44pm

Links are fixed now. Sorry for the delay.

real_psyence · November 14, 2008, 7:39pm

Does this driver support the 1600M? I was able to install the beta driver you supplied for version 177.35, but this one complains it cannot find any supported hardware.

Thanks!

tmurray · November 14, 2008, 9:06pm

it’s not in the INF, but if you know how to modify them (it’s not hard) you should be able to add it without any problems. (basically, find a driver that supports your card, look for the string “Quadro FX 1600M,” move that line to a similar location in the new INF, there’s a PCI ID near the beginning of the line, find the line in the old INF that contains that PCI ID, move that line as well, and you should be done.)

real_psyence · November 14, 2008, 10:23pm

yep, got it. Thanks!

repmov · November 18, 2008, 4:16pm

I wasn’t too sure where to post this - but this seems the best possible spot.

I recently upgraded my 7800GTX / 8800GT combo to dual 8800 GT’s (the 3 year old 7800gtx wasnt quite so happy with life anymore) - not in SLI mode as CUDA doesnt see both then. I was on the cuda 2 drivers at the time (the 177 ones).
All was well and everything seemed to work fine.

I then decided to upgrade to the 178.28 driver as I am playing with some longer running kernels and wanted the watchdog timer. Upgrade went fine and I rebooted.
On the reboot the windows loading screen showed and then after a few seconds it bluescreened (MEMORY_CONTROLLER) failure. Actually it was kinda quick but it was definately MEMORY_ something or other. In then went into an endless boot / bluescreen cycle.

I stopped it - removed the one 8800GT and rebooted. The OS came up fine again. I plugged the second 8800 back in and blue screen on boot. Interestingly enough either card on its own was fine.
I then downgraded to the older drivers , put both cards back into the machine and rebooted - all was fine.

I’m not really bothered not running the latest drivers but thought it would be good to report it.

mandrak · November 19, 2008, 4:25am

yes, it seems I’m not the only one having problem with the same driver.

It has serious bug in combination with nvidia RAID controller (nForce driver 15.23 winXP 64). Both can not exist at the same time with two GPU cards (or 9800GX2). Symptoms: Windows starts, desktop is populated with icons and then only black screen with machine hung.

128.13 works fine.