nVidia drivers Oct 2012 and Later vs. DisplayLink Dec 2012 and Earlier

We’re seeing a number of reports that nVidia’s drivers for certain chipsets dated October 2012 and later have problems in the presence of DisplayLink drivers.

When things like this have happened in the past, DisplayLink has released updates which “catch up” to nVidia’s newer drivers. Unfortunately, as of the current DisplayLink release (7.1 M0 just released Dec 2012), the current issues are improved, but not yet fully resolved.

Problem reports are mostly from Windows 8 users, which are getting automatically updated to these newest nVidia drivers — but it may be a harbinger for Windows 7 users who will be getting the same updates later.

If you’re a DisplayLink USB graphics user in this situation, if possible we recommend staying on nVidia drivers older than October 2012 (or rolling back to any earlier version) until there’s a known fix from DisplayLink (likely) or nVidia (unlikely).

Note this does not affect Windows Multipoint Server 2012, which is the first Windows version that has an explicit driver model for USB graphics (USB zero client terminals specifically), that keeps drivers from conflicting with each other and avoids these kinds of troubles completely.

We don’t ever want customers stuck, so email us anytime at support@plugable.com — we’ll do whatever we can to help. Our apologies and thanks for your patience!