I'm running NVidia driver 30.0.14.9649 on my XPS 8930 with GTX 1660 Ti GPU. It was installed on 1-25-22 by Windows Update.  It's stable and I have no video issues here.

Don't know where you're seeing version "xxx.xx" in Control Panel. The version number I posted above is listed both by Device Manager and by msinfo32.exe.

That explains why I see the NVIDIA version in Control panel. I circumvented WU from installing updates for the graphics driver three years ago. I manually install the NVIDIA graphics driver from NVIDIA’s site  

You have the DCH (Declarative Componentized Hardware) type which is part of the Universal Windows Platform. I have NVIDIA's Standard driver type. Functionally, there's no difference between the two.

I just don’t trust Microsoft as far as I can throw a piano 

I'll have to get on NVIIDA's forum to ask about a stable driver version (number)   

Maybe if you were to tell us exactly what Nvidia video-card you have, we could recommend a video driver version from nvidia.com . 

I agree that if the card is older, then the latest Nvidia driver is not likely to be the best one. Additionally, I would not expect any video-driver that Dell has posted for the (older) XPS-8930 to be very current. Those drivers are really just to initially get the machine running. Then, you move to Windows-Update, nvidia.com and/or amd.com .

The only thing I continue to get from Dell.com is BIOS updates (when I must or really have a reason to) and things like AW-CC (which Alienware develops and distributes). 

Don't know what you're expecting, but the driver I got via WU on 1-25-22 is dated internally as being released on 10-20-21. It has been perfectly stable. Not a single crash caused by anything related to NVidia.

I just ran my GPU through NVidia's driver search tool, and it shows a bunch of even newer drivers...

@Anonymous 

The version you reference is GeForce 451.67 WHQL

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/game-ready-drivers/

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/results/187098/
Driver Version: 511.79 - WHQL
Release Date: Mon Feb 14, 2022
Operating System: Windows 10 64-bit,
Windows 11
Language: English (US)
File Size: 786.72 MB

@Tesla1856 

lending credence to a few contributors on the NVIDIA forum is that they all sound at ease with installing 472.12. They also at least sound sincere that the nvlddmkm errors that I experienced can be resolved with Wagnardsoft's DDU uninstaller. I know what DDU does.I know the risks that go with using it. I never used it before. And I haven't found a justification to resort to it.

Perhaps the oddest part of all of this is that there are no logs / records in Reliability Monitor / Event Viewer anymore. All 20 critical Windows Hardware errors  - Live Kernel Event 141  . . . vanished. gone ! 

---

@Anonymous wrote:

@Tesla1856 

lending credence to a few contributors on the NVIDIA forum is that they all sound at ease with installing 472.12.

         

---

I see you have a GTX-1060 .

The GTX-1070's in both my Auroras are:

Driver Package v457.51-DCH and v456.71-DCH . 

Nvidia Control Panel IS installed. Nvidia GeForce Experience IS-NOT installed.

Not sure why it allows you to install a non-DCH driver in recent Windows-10 Pro 64bit.

If your Intel CPU also has a on-board-GPU ... it must be updated as well. Windows-Update usually takes care of that.

Missing Reliability History entries points to a Windows corruption problem or maybe disk failure.

@Tesla1856 

This is bad karma or my suspicion that something was going to happen sooner or later came true

after my last reply, the graphics card lost all communication with applications.

That makes this the second incidence. The first was March 2nd. Installed  472.12 on March 1 [EDIT] : 472.12 was installed around Feb 20th 

I checked the graphics card. Its seated. Any GPU test that might be recommend ? 

---

@Anonymous wrote:

---

---

 I ran the Dell ePSA overnight without shutting down on the day when the critical errors happened. All of the log entries of just those 20 Live Kernel Event 141 had disappeared the next day. II don't know if you meant that I was inferring 'all' entries disappeared.     

---

Just can't think of a normal cause or reason for Event-Log entries to just go missing (other than some problem).

don't understand what re-seating the card again is for. ePSA is so long.  don't believe there's a way to run just the GPU test in ePSA. Testing the vram with say GPUMemTest was my thought, or else unless some other test would be better