NVIDIA Responsible for Nearly 30% of Vista Crashes in 2007

It’s pretty easy to blame Microsoft for the buggy experiences many users of Vista have had, but they aren’t the only culprits in this mess of an OS. No, it turns out that NVIDIA’s craptastic drivers have been responsible for a whopping 28.8% of all Vista crashes. Yes, nearly 1/3rd of every single Vista crash was caused by NVIDIA drivers, and that includes all the computers out there that, you know, don’t have an NVIDIA graphics card.

Microsoft’s software is only responsible for 17.9%, but you’ve also gotta give the big M credit for the 17% that’s “unknown.” Behind that, ATI is responsible for 9.3% of crashes, with Intel causing 8.8% of them.

That 29% of crashes worked out to a real-world figure of about 479,000 crashes. The sample in question comes from an unspecified period last year, so one has got to assume, or at least hope, that Microsoft and NVIDIA have gotten their shit under control by now to not be breaking computers so frequently.

In any case, it’s interesting to see just how big a hand NVIDIA had in creating the perception that Microsoft’s shiny new OS was a big, buggy crash machine right out of the gate. Nice work, NVIDIA. [Ars Technica]