Is your gaming laptop freezing during game startup?
Is your gaming laptop freezing during game startup?
Like someothers I have registred this site to share my experince with you. My laptop model is Nitro 16-41. RTX 4060 CPU: Ryzen 7 7840HS. I have exactly the same problem you guys having. This problem was started at the end of January 2025. When you try to update your nvidia driver to recent version problem immediatly starts. Normal activities cause nothing but when you hit a game (or trying to switch gpu by yourself manually) screen freezes during igpu to dgpu switching process and game loads at background. You can hear the game sound but screen is already stuck. Beyond that point you can not do anthing to the screen work againe except doing forced power cut (by press holding power button) to restart labtop or closing to lid and wait for a while to reopen labtop lid to reach logon screen. I have tried countless things to overcome and fix this issue but nothing worked permenantly. DDU uninstalls- reinstalls in safe mode, memory tests, ssd tests, windows health check, reinstall, update (including hard reset), bios check, Amd chipset versions, changing power options in windows, event viewer researches e.t.c you named what ever you may thing of. But no success. The only thing worked was insalling Acer support page driver which is nvidia 556.29 version. As soon as I installed this driver all the problems was solved no freeze issue at all. The problem with this option is that you have to stick with that driver forever unless Acer publish a newer versions continuously. This may not a big issue for now but time goes by the driver will be useless for future games if they won't release newer versions.
Lets go deeper to examine what really cause the problem. First of all I have to indicate that there is no hardware problem. There is definitly a software problem. According to my researchs and tryings out comes there is nothing wrong with recent nvidia drivers. I am saying this because when I block all the Acer services that work on the laptop by msconfig then windows 11 and Advance Optimus handles switching process flawlessly. No freezing at all. But of course you can not use any of that Acer softwares like Nitrosense, Care Center e.t.c. Most critical software among them is Nitrosense because you control everthing related to your laptop by it. Battery charge limiter, fans, RGB keyboard, power options e.t.c. If you dont care about all these controls and if recent nvidia drivers are more important than anything else you can choose this option. If you say "No I want and need these controls" then another option is choosing dgpu default in BIOS settings and use your computer all the time with dgpu (in my case RTX 4060). This option also has side effects ofcourse. Your laptop would consume more power along with sort battery life and may face with heating problems. It is up to you. Unfortunaetly it seems that Acer is forcing you to choose one of two bad options atleast up to now. Either way you would lose something.!!!
I know it is a very long post but I wanted to share my experience and hassles for clearing the picture for those who suffering same problem that I have been through. Anyway finally : Actually the real cause of the problem is Nitrosense itself. It is the creator of confilicts between recent nvidia drives and system. Because, as far as I understand, it containes (or may recently added because there was no problem prior to 2025) some codes and services that checks your laptop version and nvidia driver version than reacts accordingly. When you uninstall Nitrosense you will see that no switching problem anymore. But as I indicated above if you need to use Nitrosense without any freezing problem along with Advance Optimus benefits you have to stick with old nvidia driver provided by Acer Support.
YOU DONT HAVE ANY OTHER OPTION AT ALL. What a disappointment for almost recently released gaming laptop. Congratulation Acer!!!!!