I recently had a problem installing an updated nVidia driver on my Win11 system for my RTX 3090 Ti card.
Condensed version: The graphics driver install failed. I tried pretty much everything - SBIOS update, chipset driver reinstall after running DDU, swapping in another GPU.
I opened a ticket with nVidia support, and while they were very responsive, I have some bones to pick.
I asked them where I could find driver installation log files. I was told that the installer doesn’t create log files. I learned from another expert elsewhere that this is true, but only because logging is disabled by default. nVidia has an article (linked below) that describes using registry keys they can provide to enable and disable logging.
I ran the installer, captured the logs, and gave them to the support tech. He said they reviewed them and could find nothing that pointed to a reason for the failures. I reviewed the log files myself, and while I’m no expert, I was able to easily figure out what was the most likely cause. The installer was failing to unzip required files because the system was running out of space in the TEMP directory.
I realized that I had caused the problem by changing the default TEMP and TMP environment variables from the default location to a TEMP folder on a 16GB RAM Drive I’d created. MSFS was using 15.3 GB of that for cache, leaving insufficient room for the TEMP files needed for the driver installation.
I reset the TEMP and TMP environment variables to the default location, rebooted, ran DDU in Safe Mode, rebooted, and ran the 531.41 driver installation again. Success!
I guess I’m a little peeved that nVidia Support didn’t know how to enable logging (or didn’t want to tell me) and weren’t able to glean some fairly obvious information from the log files that was pretty obvious to a layman like me. This took a week to resolve. If I’d had the ability to capture log files when I first asked for them in my original support request, I would have had a much less frustrating experience.
Yes, I created the problem. And no, there’s no reason for them to ask whether I’d changed the location of the system TEMP directory. Dumb move on my part. But the clues were in the log files, and their detective skills seem lacking. In case anyone is interested, here’s a link to an article that descibes how to enable logging driver installation.
First line support orgs are generally terrible. They are designed to filter the volume of support requests down to the minimum possible. Basically they’re the support equivalent of the executive PA who will block almost all incoming calls to protect the time of the CEO.
Sounds like you got to second line (an actual support engineer) but still hit the wall of ‘here’s the standard answer’ and ‘computer says no’. You’d probably need to escalate to third line to get to someone who would really dig into the problem for you.
Ultimately, though, you solved your problem yourself on your own time and at your own expense, and that’s really the outcome that I suspect nVidia would have preferred.
Thanks for sharing this, though your not an expert, it is good to learn how to read these files and it will enhance your tech knowledge which comes in handy when needed. So you have turned bitterness into sweetness.
I agree. It would have been nice if their support tech (Level 1 or Level 2) would have known how to enable logging. After all, it was an nVidia support article I found it in. Maybe I ask too much. But I certainly could have saved days of frustration if I’d had those logs early in the process.
I deal with support all the time in my business. The first thing I ask for is responsiveness. I have to give them credit for that part of the process. They responded quickly and stayed with it. Too bad their ‘knowledge base’ wasn’t a bit more complete.
You at least had a better support experience than most people I work with. I work in-house desktop support for a major financial institution. When people call the helpdesk, they get someone in India that can only work from a script. If (and I mean if) they get a trouble ticket entered correctly, it then goes to dispatchers in Mexico. Getting that group to properly dispatch a ticket is even harder than getting the ticket written correctly. I work out of Greensboro NC. I often get tickets where the end user is in another state. That location is entered in the actual description, but the dispatcher only reads the office location on file for that user and sends it to me. My process after that is usually…
Read ticket
Spot possible blunder
Call end user to confirm their location
Share a laugh over said blunder
Inform end user that I need to have ticket re-dispatched
Remove my name from the ticket and send it back to the main queue
Contact dispatcher to notify them that the ticket needs to go to someone closer than an entire day’s drive.
Whereas I agree in this case I don’t when it comes to the page file, the windows set up is never enough and generally sucks because it will still page to drives that are being readily accessed by your apps. IMO the OP’s problem is not that he can’t do it but he made changes to the Temp environment without indicating where it should page to and in what size blocks, like any app Windows can only follow instructions. There is also the pacing element, ram is possibly too fast.
I said if you moved/changed the page file I could understand but at least Windows is aware of it. IMO moving/changing the temp environment is not so wise as it would mean roaming must be made aware of such changes and I’m not sure it would look for them without several changes in the registry.
As for the latter point, ram memory works differently to that of Nand, Nand’s states need to be reset once data is wiped while ram’s states are either on or off which gives a speed difference that would have to be synced through it’s or the MB’s memory controllers. With fast NVMe the speed gap is closing or has closed hence development of Direct Storage but it still has it’s issues. Those sync instructions have to come from somewhere and Windows is nothing more than a dumb app that needs to be told what to do.
As I said in my original post, changing the TEMP environment variable was stupid of me.
Interesting thought. I’ll have to research that further. Do you have links to any technical articles you can share that delve into that? I’m having trouble believing that RAM frequency can actually harm read/write operation speed. But I’m certainly open to being educated more on the subject.
Well it can’t, that’s why we have memory controllers to sync the data and is why read and write speeds are never constant. My point is that the controllers have to be synced and would be expecting to write to a drive rather than to ram. For that I expect a specific instruction set would be needed similar to setting up a ram drive. There’s nothing I’ve read specifically but just an opinion based on what I’ve picked up over the years.
Edit: of course you did set up a ram drive so I guess that’s not really the answer you desire. That’s a fact I was somehow bypassing in my original thoughts so maybe I’m just confused as you are … but it’s definitely a reason why we have memory controllers. What I said about NAND memory and ram memory states is correct, ram has to be powered to retain data.
Yes. That’s why I use a batch file to copy a mirrored image file back to the RAM drive on startup. You want a clean cache for glider work, so that doesn’t apply to you.
