WINsat.exe ran itself after boot, then the Nvidia Display Driver crashed to BSOD.

after a reboot i did a clean install of the original driver in safe mode (from the CD provided by PCS) but it happened again (when i tried to update the WEI rating, which i now know uses WINsat.exe) and this time showed 'Nvidia Kernel Mode Driver has stopped responding' but it recovered. the WEI progress then froze followed by my entire laptop, so i did a reboot.

after a google trip on my phone i found that WINsat.exe has caused issues for others, so i disabled it via the task scheduler when i turned my laptop back on. would i be safe with updating to the newest Nvidia drivers again, or could this be an issue with hardware as well as software?

Did you run any cleaning software prior to your situation. You can safely disable it as you have done, and re install Nvidia drivers. I would do a chkdsk first just to make sure all is ok and then do a custom install and install the drivers fresh.

Chkdsk

Press start - Type Cmd - right click cmd and run as admin
In cmd box type chkdsk /f /r and press return then Y for yes.

After chkdsk custom install the nvidia drivers while WINsat is disabled.

Download fresh drivers from

http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Scan.aspx

thanks. i was on the latest drivers (i rolled back from beta 306) but thought the first thing to eliminate is the driver

ill run checkdisk after this youtube video is finished, im running on Intel HD4000 atm with no issues, but want to play Guild Wars 2

it says the file type is NTFS, it cannot lock it and its in use. should i tell it to check on the next reboot, then reboot?

Im sorry, I should have explained more thoroughly.

In cmd box type chkdsk /f /r and press return then Y for yes.

Click to expand...

after you type the chkdsk /f /r command it will ask if you want to schedual on next boot as you described. The

and press return then Y for yes.

Click to expand...

part is for that reason. Once it says it is in use do you want to run on startup this is where you press Y and then enter, and then reboot the computer. Upon reboot it will do the chkdsk scan. It is due to the /f and /r commands. These tell the chkdsk to fix any errors it finds (/f) and locate bad sectors and recover readable information (/r). The disk must be locked for these to proceed with the test.

ok it ran and didn't find any bad sectors or any errors, so im going to do a clean install of the Nvidia driver

ok, updated the driver with WINsat.exe disabled and haven't had any issues

Have you tried it with it (winsat.exe) enabled now again. ?