Download the new Nvidia driver hotfix to sort out BSODs and random screen flashing

Nvidia Turing GPU
(Image credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia has released a hotfix for its latest driver, which ostensibly fixes a 'DCP Watchdog Violation error' for last-gen graphics cards, but there's also a good chance if you're experiencing random screen flashing or the dreaded blue screen of death the new GeForce GPU software could fix that. 

The latest full Nvidia driver, version 466.63, only went live a few days ago at the start of June, but the new 466.74 hotfix can already be downloaded from Nvidia itself. Though it's worth noting that, if you do go Googling to try and find it, a search for the latest Nvidia drivers will still tell you to download the 466.63 version this hotfix is heatsolving.

GeForce Hotfix display driver version 466.74 is based on our latest Game Ready Driver 466.63.

The hotfix addresses the following issue:

[Kepler/Turing]:DCP WATCHDOG VIOLATION error may occur on some systems with GeForce GTX 600/700/16 and GeForce RTX 20 series GPUs [3321668][3321735]

A post about the hotfix on r/nvidia has a user questioning whether the new driver would have any effect on some BSODs they'd been encountering which cited nvlddmkm.sys as an issue, and an Nvidia forum rep confirmed that it should be able to address that problem too.

The hotfix can be downloaded directly via the links below.

You can download the correct version of the hotfix driver from these links, but it's worth stating that you should really only be downloading this update if you're experiencing problems with your Nvidia-based setup. If all is golden with the 466.63 driver then you might as well stick with that rather than risk a needless update.

Dave James
Editor-in-Chief, Hardware

Dave has been gaming since the days of Zaxxon and Lady Bug on the Colecovision, and code books for the Commodore Vic 20 (Death Race 2000!). He built his first gaming PC at the tender age of 16, and finally finished bug-fixing the Cyrix-based system around a year later. When he dropped it out of the window. He first started writing for Official PlayStation Magazine and Xbox World many decades ago, then moved onto PC Format full-time, then PC Gamer, TechRadar, and T3 among others. Now he's back, writing about the nightmarish graphics card market, CPUs with more cores than sense, gaming laptops hotter than the sun, and SSDs more capacious than a Cybertruck.

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