Upgraded nVidia GeForce 8800GTS Driver--Premiere Runs Slow Now

Question

For four years, I was running the same nVidia driver and Premiere and other apps ran fine.
Recently though, a project I'm working on for a client required me to add some new fonts to my workstations. Adding these fonts, or any fonts at all, would work fine until the next reboot, at which point Windows XP would just BSOD with a fault in win32k.sys. A partition restore was necessary to bring back useful system.
After some research, it was suggested that I update the video driver. I did this, installing the current 285.58 version after uninstalling the old version, rebooting, then doing a clean installation. That solved the font problem--I can install fonts and reboot and the system comes up fine. But there's a new problem: GUI acceleration is disabled in Adobe and Quark applications.. The GUI takes several seconds to paint the screen now, and I cannot play video in Premiere anymore without severe sluggishness and dropping of most of the frames. Even QuarkXpress 8 is unusable, taking 6 seconds to paint just the rulers around a page! Any time I move something, the system refuses to accept input and the mouse pointer freezes and stutters for several seconds until the screen is done repainting.
I haven't seen these sort of problems since 1990, when I had my Diamond Speedstar VGA card on ISA 8-bit bus.
Does anyone know of a fix for this problem, or what is the most recent Adobe approved nVidia 8800 driver version? I can't work like this. But I can't install the fonts my client needs when the old driver is installed because of the BSOD after rebooting.

Answer 1

Mark,
Though I have personally not had issues with new drivers, I always try to keep a few nVidia drivers tucked away, just in case. However, and from time to time, others have hit upon "bad" drivers, and either a roll-back, or patience, until a new "good" driver is released, has helped them.
I also do not update my nVidia drivers all that often, and usually only when I begin experiencing a problem.
Good luck, and that BSOD is scary. While most BSOD's are hardware related, a system driver certainly CAN cause them too. On my workstation, all that I can recall HAVE been triggered by drivers, and most of those for something like a Maxtor external. I do not use their "one-button backup" function, but the drivers for that do get installed, and sometimes act up. I suppose that was once a good idea, but has bitten me a few times in the past.
Good luck, and wish that I had something that would help you. Please report how things go.
Hunt