NVIDIA control panel crashes with data execution prevention message

Question

I'm running a Windows 7 desktop with an NVIDIA GeForce 210 display adapter. It was working fine until I upgraded my ~1 year old video drivers to the now-current release version 285.62. Now, when I launch NVIDIA Control Panel, the program crashes and Windows informs me that it was closed to prevent data execution (DEP).

I then tried the current beta driver 290.53, which did not fix the issue.

Why might this be happening and how can I change the driver settings? Fundamentally I want to swap which monitor is the primary one.

Answer 1

A little late to the party, but I've had the same problem for a while and stumbled upon a solution/workaround just the other day.

I have two main accounts on my home PC - Administrator, and my own account (with Administrator privileges). Neither are password protected (I know, but it's only me that uses it), and the Administrator account rarely gets used.

While updating to the latest drivers, I discovered that if I log in to the Administrator account, I can open the NVIDIA Control Panel, while opening it in my own account still gives me a DEP error and crash.

My solution (YMMV) was to set up a password on the Administrator account, and run the following from a command prompt:

runas /user:Administrator "C:\Program Files\NVIDIA\Control Panel\nvcplui.exe"

(* note: I'm not at my home PC, so can't check the path - search in the "\Program Files\NVIDIA" directory for nvcplui.exe).

Enter the password when requested, and the control panel pops up. It seemed to work for me (despite running as another user, changes to the Control Panel made changes to my display).

The reason for setting a password on the Administrator account is that runas won't let you do this without a password. There is a workaround for that too, but that would lower your security somewhat.

Answer 2

Reviving again a long-ago-asked question, but I have found the culprit of the crash (at least on my machine) - as it has also hit the Administrator account, negating my previous answer.

The issue seems to be (for me at least) selecting the "System Update->Update Your System Drivers" page in the NVIDIA Control Panel. Once this is done, every time you try to load up the Control Panel, it will attempt to load that page and crash again.

To get into the Control Panel without it crashing, I have found that deleting the following registry entry works:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\NVIDIA Corporation\NVControlPanel2\Client\LastPage

Be aware that manually editing the registry can seriously mess up your PC fun-time - by making your PC unstable/unbootable.

Anyway, deleting that registry key resets the last page that the NVIDIA Control Panel was looking at, so when you next fire up the NVIDIA Control Panel, it will go to the "title screen". If you subsequently select the Update page, it will crash and you'll have to delete the key again. Not a major trauma, but I'll look for a better solution and post if I find one.

Answer 3

If you are using a HP computer, please go in the BIOS and disable the DEP. This might do the trick. I have done that on all (380) PCs on my company and we've fix several issues with that.

Let me know!