That one GPU driver issue that cost me 4 hours on a Tuesday

I had a client bring in a gaming rig last week that was just randomly crashing during any game. This thing was a beast, i9 and a 3080, so I figured it was overheating or something obvious. Checked temps, fine. Ran memtest, fine. Swapped the PSU, still crashing. After about 3 hours of pulling my hair out, I noticed the GPU driver version was from June 2023. Turns out there was a known conflict with that specific driver and Windows 11 update KB5029351, and rolling back the driver fixed it in 5 minutes. The client had been dealing with it for two months before bringing it to me. Has anyone else run into a driver issue that made you feel like you were losing your mind for way too long?

2 comments

2 Comments

dylan_thompson3d ago

Minor nitpick but that KB was actually for Windows 10, not 11.

keithbennett3d ago

Chalk another one up to me not reading past the first sentence in the blog post. I saw KB numbers and my brain just went "oh yeah, that's a Windows update." Totally ignored the version it was for, which is basically my signature move at this point. I'm just glad nobody's tracking how many times I've installed the wrong cumulative update on a VM just to test something. Does anyone else get that feeling when you realize you've been troubleshooting the wrong OS for half an hour?