nvidia kernel crash fix

Have you tried playing games like: Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor, GRID, GRID 2, DIRT 3, Watch_Dogs, World Of Tanks and not being able to sit and relax while having a good session of gameplay due to some annoying random crash? 

Every time I was trying to play one of these games I was getting a game freeze followed by a sound stutter/buzzing and then a black screen. There were times when after the black screen I could hear the game running in background and there were times when after the black screen I was returned to desktop and the following error was popping out for my video card: “Nvidia windows kernel mode driver 344.75 stopped responding and was recovered successfully”.

Here’s what I’ve tried so far (none of them worked):

• Install the video card drivers. I’ve tried both update and clean install. Also tried to reinstall the latest version after cleaning the available version on my PC with DriverSweeper (even if it is the latest version).
• In nvidia Control Panel -> “Manage 3D Settings” I ran the games with all of these settings or with some variations of them:

• enabled FXAA,
• set Anisotropic Filtering to 16X,
• enable AA Mode Override,
• set AA Settings to 32XCSAA,
• set AA Transparency to 8X,
• Set Max Pre-Rendered Frame to 1,
• set Multi Display to 1,
• select Prefer Maximum Performance
• turn off Texture Filtering
• Vertical Sync option set to "Adaptive (half refresh rate)"
• Triple buffering set to On

• Still using nvidia Control Panel -> “Configure Surround, PhysX”, in “PhysX settings” I selected the the video card processor (switched from Auto to GTX 680 in my case).
• In Control Panel (this time window’s CP) -> Power Options -> Change advanced power settings -> PCI Express -> make sure that the “Link State Power Management” is off.
• Reinstall windows. It was a good old classic clean OS installation, no system restores, no custom disk image restoring. Also, it seemed a good idea at that time :)
• Buying a new, more powerful PSU. Yep, did that too (I was desperate).

What actually worked for me was to lower the GPU speed (clock speed). 

By default the video card is overclocked by Asus @ 1201 MHz. Manufacturer link: ASUS GTX 680

Using the ASUS GPU Tweak software I set the GPU clock speed @ 1130MHz (1137MHz is the base clock value). I set this tool to start with windows and saved a profile with the desired clock speed which can be activated via a keyboard shortcut (I don't seem to find any setting that saves the custom clock speed every time the program is started).
You can get this software for free from Asus website here.

Since then I am crash/freeze free.
I think it had something to do with the fact that the video card is overclocked (factory or user overclock) because since I lowered the GPU clock speed to base value I can play all of those games I listed in the beginning of this post without any crashes.

Steam stuck in the updating steam information

Hi,

Here's a quick and easy fix if you get stuck in the "updating steam information" prompt after launching the Steam client.
Don't bother to uninstall the client (be it partial uninstall or full) it ain't gonna work. At least it didn't work on my side :)

I'm using Win 7, so the instructions below will be for Windows 7, but that should not be a problem if you are using a different Windows OS.
Step 1
Go to Control Panel -> Windows Firewall and choose the "Allow a program or feature through Windows Firewall" option (left side navigation menu of the Win Firewall window).
Step 2
In this window look for the "Steam" or "Steam Client Bootstrapper" entry and remove it.
To remove it you need to click the "Change settings" button in the same window, highlight the Steam entry and then click the "Remove" button. For more information please see the image below.

Step 3
At this point you'll need to add the Steam client executable again in the Allowed Programs list.
To do this you'll need to click the "Allow another program..." button (see image above - 4) and then "Browse" to the location where you have installed the Steam client and add the "Steam.exe" in the list.
Step 4
Launch the Steam client and enjoy your games :P

Side note
This solution also solves another problem of Steam client that it is unable to download any game from the store.

Hope this solves your problem quickly and you didn't had to dig the entire internet to find this solution.

Stay well!
CJ