Latest Nvidia Beta Drivers Include WMC Fix

It doesn’t happen often, but I don’t currently have any Nvidia GPUs in my house and so I haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing the problem of WMC throwing a black screen during playback. If you have been experiencing black screen issues during playback on your Nvidia equipped HTPC, it might be a good idea to download Nvidia’s 285.79 drivers.

Nvidia have released a new beta driver that includes a fix for black screen problems withWindows Media Center.  The problem seems to be affecting a few people in the Windows Expert Forum and seems to be caused by the last driver update.

The Digital Lifestyle

  • Nice. I reverted back to the

    Nice. I reverted back to the previous drivers since I was having that problem with the latest ones. I’ll wait until the 285.79 aren’t beta anymore though before I switch.

  • TMT doesn’t always appreciate

    TMT doesn’t always appreciate the bleeding edge of graphics drivers either.    But, that’s half the fun, no?

  • The Beta 285.79 does fix the

    The Beta 285.79 does fix the problem. I wouldn’t wait for the WQHL drivers however. That’s how they broke it last time. Everything was working in the last beta and then the WQHL hit and whamo! no video in Media Center.

  • The previous drivers weren’t

    The previous drivers weren’t giving me any issue, and then I upgraded cuz I was bored while waiting for the Comcast tech to come out and figure out why my cablecard wasn’t getting the channels it should have. Dumb move on my part… trying to troubleshoot channels you can’t even see haha. I reverted after he left and all was fine. Thankfully he believed me when I said the black screen was my fault and I’d fix it, and thankfully the cablecard diagnostics said when the channels were working or not even though we couldn’t see them.

  • I almost had the same

    I almost had the same experience.  Everything was working just fine when the notification of new drivers popped up.  Updated since I like to keep up to date.  And…  no picture at all whether live TV, recorded etc.  I had sound and a normal desktop just no video, only a black screen.  I reverted the driver and all is back to normal.

  • Just installed 295.73 in my

    Just installed 295.73 in my futile quest for decent BD/DVD performance.   The good news is the WMC video problem has been resolved.    Be sure to remove any old NVidia plugins you may have lying around (System Monitor, Updater, etc…) otherwise you’ll see a nasty crash everytime you bring up NVidia Control Panel if one of those panes was the last one selected.   It took me a while to track this one down.

    • For NVIDIA users with a GPU

      For NVIDIA users with a GPU susceptible to the “29/59 issue” in WMC, 295.73 causes issues e.g. my GT 430 has a strobing effect with the aforementioned video, thus I’m sticking with 290.53. Make sure to utilize the “full-screen videos” setting as content type reported to the display.

  • For those with older boards,

    For those with older boards, 8600 and 98xx, the latest drivers can cause DCA to fail