STEAM incompatible with Nvidia drivers

Have you tried disabling the steam in game overlay?

It is worth remembering that the problem is on the video driver / hardware side.  An application (the game or steam) should not be capable of crashing a video driver as the event log indicates.

I disable as much of steam as possible and play in offline mode.

The only time my computer locks/freezes/bluescreens is when I am playing a steam game. Any non-steam game I play works perfectly fine.

Nevertheless, it is true that if I find the driver that works with steam, it'll work with everything else too. Just frustrating that steam has to be so picky.

As mentioned above, it is not Steam being picky, it is your video drivers.  They are the problem, Steam is simply the unlucky app to expose this.  Given it seems to be all Steam apps it really sounds like the steam overlay is still enabled as that would be the one common thing between all the games.

Given you are on XP I imagine NVidia are no longer testing the drivers quite the same as they once were on that OS.

Hmm.. It could be FE as well. You have any other steam games to test with?

Which is fine. I am willing to roll back to the drivers that I was successfully using before this debacle started. Just tell me which set are not 'picky' cause I didn't have the oppertunity to see what version those drivers were before the initial mass lockup....was hoping SD has experienced similar driver problems with Steam and already has the solution of which drivers to use.

Technically no. FELH is my only steam game.

Un-technically....in light of the problem, I've downloaded a few other steam-only games (SoaSE:R and Portal were the first two that came to mind) to see if the problem persists. Sure enough, same freeze happens almost right away upon entering those games aswell. The non-steam games I've tried have all run perfectly fine...and some are quite intense graphically (Oblivion, Dragon Age: Origins)

The problem is likely XP. Many companies are no longer testing their drivers or software with XP because Windows XP is EOL on April 4, 2014. This could explain why your older drivers work but not the newer drivers.

I agree with Illauna, I think your problem is Windows XP.  I'm also confused as to why you would require 16Gb of RAM and an SSD to upgrade to it.

To answer youyr question I have an Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS running GeForce 327.23 Driver on the computer I am currently using and I odn't have any graphics issues.  It is Windows 7.

NVIDIA GT530 running 327.23 on Win7 64 Bit.  No issues here with Steam or FELH.

because I like my computers to run very very good.

K. Sounds to me like I have to roll back my drivers till I find one that's been tested with XP. downloaded a dozen or so.

Let the testing begin.

If you don't have the hardware to make use of a new OS it becomes less financially viable. IE its not worth it. I bit the bullet and upgraded without upgrading my system... and all that did is delay any major hardware upgrade i may make for the foreseeable future. (since I would need to repurchase windows with any major upgrade)

OEM licenses tied to the motherboard means if you're going to upgrade hardware generally you want to do it before or at the same time as your OS.

fistalis, I HAVE re-activated windows (most versions(so far no window hate)) with a motherboard/hdd change, and if there have been 3 activations, I might have to phone the activation phone line and eventually get to a person & tell the the re-activcation is due to either motherboard OR hard drive failure/replacement, and am given a manual type in activation code.

harpo

le frick'n sigh

umpteen times of dick'n around with nvidia drivers and still no go.

Tried:

• 327.23
• 320.49
• 314.07
• 296.10
• 285.58
• 327.23 without PhysX

nothing wrong with my xp sp-3 install. nothing wrong with the nvidia drivers. I load all sorts of graphic intense software and it runs. Only bloody time it freezes is when I am running Steam games!

314.07 did give me a good run with SoaSE:R though....was able to get about 1 hour in before it froze....not that I knew much of what I was doing in the game....

285.58 also lets me play about 6 turns of FE:LH instead of the ussual 1-2. Still does critially freeze though.

It's quite frustrating....cause I've played 100's of hours of FE and FE:LH on my machine. Nothing has changed on my end....and after all this time spent dick'n with drivers, I'm leading to believe it's a problem with the game or with steam.

Further thoughts/ideas?

Could it be the hardware itself is developing a fault?

Is it running unusually hot?

You should really consider updating your OS. Your bottlenecking your system by sticking with XP with the specs you posted earlier. 

It would be highly coicidental for FE:LH to be the only game that has just recently pushed my GPU over the edge.

I run Dragon Age: Origins with 56gigs of graphics mods with no problem...

edit:

just downloaded TechPowerUp GPU-Z

Have a PCB temp of 56 C

Have a GPU temp of 67 C

I have really considered upgrading.

Truly, if the parts and OS were free, I'd have done it already.

Alas....ones financial position dictates ones ability to purchase 'would be nice' items.

ps. I don't mean to sound snippy at the moment. 7 hours of driver installations will do that to a person.

edit:

so I went really really slow through FE:LH to see when it locks up.

Currently have 285.58 installed with no PhysX or DirectCompute. This has given me the best results so far. I can get 4 turns into the game before it locks up.

Ok I don't fully understand the architecture but I remember listening to a podcast where Brad Wardell was talking about using the GPU to assist with AI calculations. According to him this was to make up for the hardware limitations pre-64 bit processors. Because of this, provided this still is happening, it is still possible that the GPU experiencing a heavier work load. 

Also did you have any problems with Elemental : Fallen Enchantress or Elemental : War of Magic?

I know they also changed the lighting engine with FE:LH. 

Try turning off any mods or extra graphic settings. The problem could just be with 1 of the graphical features that your drivers do not support.

Just looking at the specs on the error logs you should have a good enough system for Windows 7. You don't need 16gb of ram and SSD. You can always add to your system as money becomes available. You also don't need to spend a ton of money installing Windows 7. I don't know your financial situation but Windows 7 is just about a 100 bucks. Slight diet change or little gas usage for a couple weeks is generally enough to squeeze it in.

Never played War of Magic.

Never had problems with Elemental: Fallen Enchantress

Never had problems with Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes.....until I did a window's update ~ 2 weeks back. Now I can't get it to work again, no matter what I do.

I've been trying to get the game to run without any mods. I haven't done anything fancy with the other graphic settings.

The GPU isn't experiencing any heavier work load than it used it.

Try uninstalling the updates that were installed 2 weeks ago. This may have nothing to do with the NVidia drivers or card. Once you identify which update is causing the problem you can then determine how to best handle it. 

Good Morning

Another update.

I've been going through my install with a fine-tooth comb and I came across my Intel 8400 chipset SM Bus Controller not being installed correctly.

Fixed that and tried to run the game again under my currently installed 285.58 nvidia 8800 drivers. Game still freezes, but I'm able to exit now...it doesn't lock up the whole machine. I consider this a small victory.

Here is the debug file from the crash: https://www.dropbox.com/s/i7wvlytl699alli/debug%20--%20another%20crash%20--%20was%20able%20to%20exit%20game%20though.err

Hopefully it can help .... you know ... debug.

I'm going to try to upgrade my video drivers to the latest 327.23 version .... and HOPE that the SM Bus Controller was causing my grief all this time.

Update to come...

I don't think XP can even use 16 GBs of RAM, or even 8 for that matter.  XP 64 is horrible and that is the only version that is going to get you access to more than 3.5 GBs.  The 32 bit OSs can't do more than 3.5 GBs.  Definitely don't try to use 16 GBs of RAM in a 32 bit OS.

Windows 7 x64 or Windows 8 x64 are going to be able to use 16 GBs, but the only reason to ever have more than 8 is if you are doing high end audio or video editing.  Games still never use more than 2GBs and you would have to have infinite other stuff open at the same time as the game to use more than 6GBs.

SSD is definitely not required to run a newer OS, it is a luxury and nothing more.  No reason to feel like you need one to run a newer OS.  If you are going to get one anyway, though, it might as well be at the same time as the new OS, because that just makes things easier.

The video card is really old, like 2005ish.  Nobody tests software on 8 year old video cards.  I am not saying it's not going to work, but nVidia has no incentive to help you keep using an 8 year old card.  A HD 7770 would crush the 8800 GTS and actually have continuous driver support for quite a while for like $100.  Maybe you can fix FE LH without this, but every new game or update or whatever is probably going to give you the same problems.

I looked through the error file and it's definitely a driver that is causing the problems, but I don't know if it is necessarily a video driver.  Indeed the greatest amount of crashes are from audio drivers.  Try using different audio drivers and see if the problem persists.

I don't think that using the GPU for the AI is the problem, because AFAIK the 8800 doesn't support it.  Only new video cards support GPGPU functionality.  It wasn't invented back when the 8800s were released.  If the card doesn't appear GPGPU compatible, the computer won't even try to use the video card to calculate things this way.  The functionality would just stay with the processor.  

Also, GPGPU isn't that demanding.  The thing with GPGPU is that the computer has to be able to run whatever game it is on a computer with no GPGPU video card for those people that don't have them.  Considering a regular processor at full blast is like 1/50th of a video card's processing power, whatever it would take to crush a processor is insignificant when done on a video card.  If video settings are already overloading the video card at it is you wouldn't really see any gain by putting more on the video card, but for the most part game GPGPU is a breeze for video cards as long as the video card is more powerful than the game.

In this case it is a non-issue anyway, just saying that it takes serious programs optimized for GPGPU to crush a video card.  Most things like this aren't going to have a lot of graphics or any at all.  Software that tries to model things, for instance.  Cases like these the software maker can just force you to get a GPGPU card since they are meant for companies with the kind of money to handle that sort of expense.

Update

Updated to 327.23 with the SM Bus Controller fixed.

Still get the freeze. drat.

@Raiddinn
You are correct in that XP can only see 3.25gigs. Not worth going higher. You are also correct in that XP-64bit sucks. You are also correct in that 8gigs is all I would 'need', but since I only have 4 at the moment and since RAM is 'cheap', I'll get 16. You are also correct in that an SSD is luxery however having one on an older machine can do wonders for it's vitality.

I've tried several Audio drivers throughout my tests, though I don't think that is where the problem lies. Often when the computer freezes, I still here the audio from the game playing as normal.

I know my E8800GT is 8 years old. It still works though. If I am faced with replacing that, I might as well admit defeat and buy myself an entirely new I7 system.

Another update

I'll title it "It's not my fault"

I think I've gone through every possibility now. The freezing of the game is not my fault. Let's go through some logic:

K, so first thing I figured I try, since several believed the problem to lie within my win XP version, was to rebuild XP from the absolute ground up. Used the original CD. Downloaded and installed EVERYTHING step by step, as I did when I first did the install 5 years ago. Tried the game without any windows updates. Then tried the game with full windows updates. Both times the game froze. This rules out the problem being with winXP because I played FE and FE:LH with THAT install for many many hours.

So, I gave up and started to install the rest of my programs...it struck me as I installed dropbox and it sync'd 12 files over that I've been sending useful debug.err files to SD for a long time now. One of those files is going to have my original settings!!!! POW! Sure enough, I found a file from BEFORE this fiasco started: To my surprise, I was running Nvidia Drivers 327.23 !! Without ANY freezing. (man I wished I had thought of this a long time ago....like 2 weeks ago before I tried older drivers...) This rules out the problem being with my video drivers because I played with these drivers before.

Throughout my 'adventures' it was recommended that my audio drivers could be causing the problem. I humored myself and ran the game after a clean install without ANY audio drivers installed. Game still froze. This rules out that audio drivers could be causing the problem.

In addition, since I was playing FE:LH 1.3 before this fiasco started, I am inclined to believe that the problem does not lie within the game itself.

Lastly, with the 20th sale, SD gave me the oppertunity to purchase SoaSE Rebellion for cheap. I installed and compared running the 'borrowed' verison I recently downloaded for testing purposes that is Steam-Free with the legal version that is Steam full, and I wasn't surprised in the least when the legal version FREEZES not 2-4 minutes into the game, yet the steam-free version I can play for HOURS if I wanted (I think I clocked about 4 hours)

Utilimately, I'm back to my original hypothesis. Steam did an update and this update is COMPLETELY screwing with my machine.