Whenever NVIDIA releases a new ForceWare, I’m foolish enough to install it and hope that the bugs, that cause me to make driver rollbacks again and again, might eventually have been fixed. But instead, it seems to get worse and worse with every version …

At the moment, I still own a slightly aged videocard, namely a GeForce FX 5600 – which I could already have trashed when it was not so aged yet. But I didn’t know that back then. :)
Anyway, a few months ago I realized my long-cherished dream and connected my TV as a second monitor, so I could watch online streams or the like while working on the computer. But then I had huge trouble for over a week setting up dualview. The behavior of the great NVIDIA control panel (and of the TV respectively) was fully unpredictable. A few examples:

• sometimes I could set the signal to PAL, sometimes only to NTSC (thus: sometimes there were colors, sometimes not)
• sometimes the Desktop was displayed on the TV after a Windows reboot, sometimes nothing
• sometimes my monitor was the primary display, sometimes the TV
• every so often the resolutions of both displays changed randomly
• and sometimes the whole thing just set itself from dualview back to clone mode

And all that didn’t happen while testing and adjusting the display settings; no, there just happened something else funny after every Windows reboot, even if I hadn’t changed any settings at all for a while.

Since I had never configured a computer with two monitors before, I was convinced that the mistake had to be on my part. I thought it very doubtful that it could be a ForceWare bug, so I didn’t even deign a thought to the idea of trying an older version. And yet after a long search, I found a thread on the NVIDIA forums which pointed out that many people were having similar “TV bugs” in the newer versions (about 185 upwards).
So, as recommended there, I installed version 169 and couldn’t believe it: After a few clicks, my display was set up and I could watch videos on my TV. Great – and I wasted a whole week on that.

Since then, I have tested the latest ForceWare two or three times again, whenever a new version came out. I still thought they would fix it sometime; but no chance. So if you have similar problems, you should try an old ForceWare as well. You can find them via NVIDIA’s archive search. For example, you will find the 32 bit version for Windows XP here.
I read in several forum threads that some people didn’t have any problems up to version 182.05 – so you could grope your way further up. Personally, I’m fed up now and will stick with 169 until I get a new card. ;)
The latest version of Omega Drivers is based on ForceWare 169 – so you can use that one, too.

Besides, by my most recent investigations, I found that the number of general complaints about the ForceWare seems to rise proportionally to the version number. The 190ish versions must be expecially bad. This confirms my consideration that my next card should definitely be a Radeon … ;)