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Categories: NVIDIAWindows 10

NVIDIA GeForce Drivers for Windows 10 – Dual Displays not working

After upgrading to Windows 10, I immediately noticed that my 3 display setup no longer worked. It was powered by two NVidia graphics cards (GeForce GT 640, and a GeForce GTX 550 Ti).

For some time, I couldn’t find anything on the internet explaining as to why I lost my dual display setup. Finally I came across a forum that pointed to this NVidia Support KB article: http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3707/~/windows-10-will-not-load-the-nvidia-display-driver-for-my-older-graphics-card

Essentially Fermi based GPUs utilize WDDM 1.3 mode, whereas the newer architectures of Maxwell and Kepler support WDDM 2.0. In Windows 10, it is not able to load multiple display drivers using different WDDM versions.

For a really long time I waited and no updates enabled the functionality until September when I performed an update, and out of nowhere they started to work. I assumed they fixed the issue permanently, however after updating once again, I lost the capabilities. In this case I reverted to the last driver.

I’m not sure if they updated the Fermi driver to support WDDM 2.0, but I just know it started working. And then after a short while, with another driver update stopped working again. Again, the driver rollback fixed the issue.

 

I recently upgraded to the latest build of Windows 10, and completely lost the ability once again, and lost the ability to rollback drivers.

It was time to find out exactly what driver version WORKS with both Kepler, Fermi, and Maxwell architectures.

After playing around, I found the WORKING NVidia driver version to be: 358.50

Load this version up, and you’ll be good to go! Hope it saves you some time!

Stephen Wagner

Stephen Wagner is President of Digitally Accurate Inc., an IT Consulting, IT Services and IT Solutions company. Stephen Wagner is also a VMware vExpert, NVIDIA NGCA Advisor, and HPE Influencer, and also specializes in a number of technologies including Virtualization and VDI.

View Comments

  • Was using 358.5 as well for a while...since have discovered this...

    "The new NVIDIA GeForce 361.43 WHQL Drivers along with the Windows 10 November Update will now allow Fermi GPU owners to use WDDM 2.0 in single GPU configurations. For mixed-GPU configurations (Fermi being used in the same system with Kepler or Maxwell GPUs) you’ll be able to use WDDM 2.0 for the very first time. For those that are running Fermi GPUs in SLI, you are still stuck on WDDM 1.3."

    Double checked in the 50 page release notes for the driver and it confirms it.
    All good except for SLI

  • Mike,

    With your comment, I just decided to update from 358.5 to the latest driver just for the heck of it to check and see if it works (since some subsequent updates removed support).

    Just updated to 361.43 and it's working :D

  • good to hear...:)

    I delayed it for weeks but Windows went and updated itself, which immediately kills the 358.5 fix....so I dug into it and found nvidia finally had addressed the problem

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