I hate when they come out with new display drivers.

[WarmMachineME]

Here I am again. Usually I'm content to lurk in these forums full of my betters and try to just absorb the savvy. But, some mickey mouse problem always brings me back to the "new topic" button eventually, like some junkie or scorned lover. Almost always in this category, too.

Enough preamble. I hate that they're always coming out with new display drivers. Hate it. Because I can rest assured that when I try to update, something somewhere is going to break.

I fire up Half Life 2, and a little popup pops up and tells me I don't have the latest display driver, and I should install it, or risk potential problems. Now I know they say never to change a working system, but I figure I can't hide in one version forever, so I give it a shot. NVidia 77.72 whql.

Everything's running fine when I install it. The graphical options (on all my games) are maxxed, the framerates are smooth as glass, I figure everything's golden for once. Then I found what broke. Tried to watch a trailer I downloaded from Gamespot, and the picture quality was for crap. It was like trying to watch one of the premium cable channels while it was still scrambled.

Now I had quite an episode when I first installed my vid card, and I swear I got a college course's worth of education just from the trial and error of ironing the kinks. So when the time comes, I have the new video driver dance that I do. Uninstall, safe mode, Driver Cleaner 3, reinstall, reinstall DirectX. If none of that works, maybe reinstall the codecs.

The only thing that eventually fixed the problem was reinstalling my previous driver, listed below. But like I said, I won't be able to keep it forever. So what am I overlooking? What step should I add to the new driver dance? Does it eventually boil down to waiting for a newer driver that just doesn't happen to break anything?

[Davidoo1]

There's another thread on this topic with the same issue. I had the same problem too and this fixed it right away. It has to do with Media Player settings.

"I had exactly the same problem after installing the 77.72 driver. I thought I saw this posted on the nVidia site somewhere, but I can't find it now. Anyway, this worked like a charm.

Open Media Player, click on TOOLS in the top bar, click on OPTIONS, Click
the PERFORMANCE tab, click the ADVANCED button and check the USE HIGH QUALITY
box. I'll bet your videos will play fine now, and you can keep the 77.72 drivers!"

[WarmMachineME]

It's always something that I would never think of that ends up being the fix, too. Oh well, I'll think of it from now on, anyway. Thanks a bunch for straightening me out and getting me newer drivers.

[WarmMachineME]

I hate to double post, but any idea how to affect this same fix on Media player Classic? The settings panels are more...complicated.