GeForce Experience Not Working Fix

NVidia’s GeForce experience is probably one of the most underappreciated applications for Windows. It makes gamers’ lives a whole lot easier. It allows you to optimize and organize your games, keep your drivers up to date and record and stream your in-game activity.

For example, recording with OBS gets a whole lot simples if GeForce Experience is working properly.

Similarly to Gaming Evolved for AMD graphics cards, it can help you improve your PC’s overall gaming performance.

It does this all in a free and easy-to-use interface. However, like most software, it is not safe from the occasional error. What if GeForce Experience stops working for you? What if you try to run it and meet an error similar to this one:

Fret not, the techies here at GameGavel have your back. Once again we’ve compiled one of the most comprehensive guides to help you sort out any GeForce Experience launch and run issue. Without further ado…

Top 13 Fixes for GeForce Experience Not Loading

There are three types of error messages that you’re bound to encounter as a GeForce Experience user. These include:

• “Something went wrong. Try rebooting your PC and then launch GeForce Experience. ERROR CODE: 0x0003”
• “Something went wrong. Try rebooting your PC and then launch GeForce Experience. ERROR CODE: 0x0001”
• “Something went wrong. Try restarting GeForce Experience.”

The solutions in this guide will provide you with possible fixes for every one of these errors.

If this is your first time running GeForce Experience, you’ll need to ensure that you have the right system specs to run it. GeForce Experience’s system specifications are as follows:

• Operating System: Windows 7/8/8.1/10
• System Memory: 2GB
• CPU: Intel Pentium G Series, Quad-Core i3, i5, i7, AMD FX, or higher
• Disk Space Requirements: 20MB minimum

In addition to these requirements, it is recommended that you also have either an RTX or a GTX graphics card. Some GeForce graphics cards are supported but they may lack access to certain functionalities such as PC streaming and Game optimization.

When you’re confident that your rig adheres to the above standards, you can begin troubleshooting GeForce Experience’s issues through the use of the rest of this guide.

Fix 1: Reboot Your Computer

The most obvious solution to the majority of software related issues when it comes to Windows 10 is rebooting your computer. Sometimes users overthink and ignore the easiest of solutions. When you restart your computer, make sure that you click on the Restart option from the shutdown menu (not the Shut down option).

If you’re running Windows 10 with the Fast Start-Up feature on, it doesn’t completely shut your computer down when you click on the Shutdown option. When you shut down, it hibernates while holding on to a snapshot of the kernel.

This helps it hold onto device drivers, resources and certain services so it doesn’t have to start from scratch each time you boot your computer up.

This makes booting quicker but it also leaves some drivers in a strange state. If you want to perform a complete shutdown, hold the shift button as you click on the Shut down option. Your issues with GeForce Experience may be driver related.

Fix 2: Ensure NVidia Telemetry Container is Running

In the same way that Steam’s Connected User Experiences and Telemetry services can interfere with Steam Downloads, NVidia’s Telemetry container service can be at the center of all your issues with GeForce Experience. Here’s a possible fix for that:

1. Open Windows Run (Win+R)
2. In the Open text field, type in ‘services.msc’ (without inverted commas). This will open Windows Services.
3. Scroll through the list of services until you find one labeled ‘NVIDIA Telemetry Container’ and then right-click on it.
4. Select Properties from the pop-up menu.
5. From the Properties dialog, click on the Log On tab.
6. Click on the Local System Account radio button (if it’s not selected already).
7. Tick the checkbox labeled ‘Allow service to interact with desktop’.
8. Click on Apply and then select the General tab.
9. Click on the Start button and then OK.
10. Run NVidia GeForce Experience to check if the problem persists.

Note: If you find that you’re unable to start the service from the General tab (step 8), then click on the OK button, right-click on the NVidia Telemetry Container service and select Start from the context menu.

As the name implies, the NVidia Telemetry Container service is responsible for gathering and measuring system data and then transmitting it to NVidia. In 2016, NVidia came under fire for tracking and sending user information through its telemetry service.

While NVidia has not completely done away with telemetry, it is less invasive. According to the privacy policy (if you’ve bothered to read it), telemetry sends data about your GPU, display settings, the optimization settings you use for games, game-specific driver settings and a bunch of other system spec-related information.

NVidia uses most of this information to improve users’ quality of experience. For instance, they usually use this data to recommend the best graphical settings for your games so you don’t have to go through the trouble of tweaking them yourself.

If you’re still getting an error after trying this solution, reboot your computer and run GeForce Experience again. This should work for any user who receives an error dialog with the text: ‘Something went wrong’.

If your PC doesn’t have the NVidia Telemetry Container service, you’ll need to reinstall the driver or update it. We will show you how to do this, further down the guide.

Fix 3: Temporarily Disable Your Anti-Virus

Besides rebooting your computer, another sure-fire way to fix most software issues on Windows 10 is by temporarily disabling your antivirus. This should be in your arsenal for troubleshooting any application issue on Windows 10.’

To temporarily disable Windows Defender Antivirus, follow these steps:

1. Open the Power User menu by pressing Win + X on your keyboard.
2. Click on Settings.
3. From the Windows Settings menu, click on Update & Security.
4. Click on Windows Defender/Virus & threat protection (depending on what version of Windows 10 you have).
5. Select Manage Settings near the bottom of the screen.
6. Click on Virus & threat protection settings (the shield icon).
7. Under Real-time protection, set the toggle to off.
8. Test GeForce Experience to see if Windows Defender was the cause of all your problems. If not, go back to Virus & threat protection settings and set the toggle back on again.

The above steps are strictly for users who are running Windows Defender as their main antivirus. If you are running an alternative antivirus like Avast, we suggest you read their help documentation to learn how to temporarily disable their service.

Fix 4: Kill NVidia GeForce Experience Process

The reason NVidia’s GeForce Experience may not be loading on your computer is that an instance is already running in the background. If that is the case, you will need to kill the background process before trying to run GeForce Experience.

1. Open Windows Task Manager (press Ctrl+Shift+Esc on your keyboard).
2. Under Processes, try to find the NVidia GeForce Experience process and click on it.
3. Once you’ve clicked on the NVidia GeForce Experience process, click on the End task button which is situated in the bottom right-hand corner of the task manager screen.
4. Try to open the NVidia GeForce Experience application to see if this has resolved the issue.

If just killing the NVidia GeForce Experience backend process didn’t work for you, try killing every NVidia service you can find from Task Manager. Whether it’s NVIDIA Settings, NVIDIA User Experience Driver, NVIDIA Backend, NVIDIA Display Container or NVIDIA Local System.

Fix 5: Restart the GeForce Experience Service

Just like the human body, GeForce Experience is a sum of various complex parts. If one of these parts malfunctions, the whole stops functioning altogether.

The telemetry container service is not the only service that keeps things running smoothly. In fact, it’s just an auxiliary service compared to the NVIDIA GeForce Experience Service.

Sometimes the GeForce Experience Service will encounter an error but persist in a running state. To fix this, you’ll have to restart it manually.

1. Open a run dialog (Win + R).
2. Type ‘services.msc’ into the open text field.
3. Scroll down through the services screen until you find NVIDIA GeForce Experience Service.
4. If it’s running, right-click on it and select Stop from the pop-up menu. Wait a few seconds for the service to stop and the right-click on it again and select Start.
   If the service isn’t already running, right-click on it and select Start.
5. Wait for a few seconds until the service starts up and then try to run GeForce Experience again.

If you can’t find NVIDIA GeForce Experience Service, you may be using a different version of GeForce Experience. If this is the case, try restarting the NVIDIA NetworkService Container instead.

Fix 6: Reset Your Network Adapter

If you’re getting a message with the 0x0003 error code from GeForce Experience, then the following fix should solve it:

1. Open the Windows Power User menu (Win + X).
2. Select Windows PowerShell (Admin)/Command Prompt (Admin). This will open a console window.
3. Type in the following command: ‘netsh winsock reset’ (without inverted commas).
4. Press the enter key once you’re confident that you’ve entered the command correctly.
5. Restart your computer.

If the command is entered correctly, you should see the following message from the console window: “Successfully reset the Winsock Catalog. You must restart the computer in order to complete the reset.”

Make sure you reboot your computer and test if NVidia GeForce Experience is giving you any start-up or loading issues.

Fix 7: Install Visual C++ Packages

Nearly every game requires the latest Visual C++ Redistributable Packages to function on Windows. Most games (and a few applications) installations come pre-packaged with them. This is because a large variety of games and applications are still developed using C++ (or at least some of their components). Therefore, they will need the C++ runtime library to function properly.

The runtime library acts as a virtual machine or runtime system, very similar to the Java Runtime Environment. Even if the NVidia GeForce Experience package did not come with it, you should be running an application that has installed it.

For whatever reason, you may find that the Visual C++ Redistributable packages on your computer are corrupted or may have been uninstalled due to an error. To fix them, you will need to reinstall them.

The relevant Visual C++ Redistributables can be downloaded from Microsoft’s support site.

Fix 8: Modify GeForce Experience Compatibility Settings

For whatever reason, you may find yourself running an older version of NVidia GeForce Experience. Maybe you find that an older version is simply friendlier on system resources. Maybe you did not intentionally install an older version of GeForce Experience.

Maybe NVidia released a buggy version of GeForce Experience that only works on older versions of Windows. Whatever the case may be, this method will help you fix any compatibility issues you may have with Windows and NVidia.

1. Right-click on the GeForce Experience shortcut on your desktop (or go directly to its installation folder).
2. From the context menu, click on Properties.
3. Click on the tab labeled Compatibility.
4. Under the Compatibility mode section, tick the checkbox labeled ‘Run this program in compatibility mode for:’ 
5. From the drop-down menu below the checkbox, you ticked in the previous step, select either Windows 7 or Windows 8.
6. Under the Settings section, tick the checkbox marked ‘Run this program as an administrator’.
7. Click on Apply then OK.

After you’re done making these changes, try to run NVidia GeForce Experience. If it doesn’t work, try tweaking the compatibility mode again. For example, if you previously selected Windows 7 as the compatibility mode, try testing NVidia GeForce Experience with Windows 8 as its compatibility mode.

Fix 9: Manually Update GeForce Experience

Since you cannot open and run GeForce Experience, you cannot really update it automatically. This means you will need to update the application manually.

1. Download the latest version of GeForce Experience.
2. While it’s downloading, launch Windows Task Manager (ctrl + shift + esc)
3. From the Processes tab, try to find any process related to NVidia’s GeForce experience and kill it (select each on and click on the End Task button).
4. Once the GeForce Experience installation file has been downloaded, run it.

Set up should be standard. Just follow all the prompts until it is set up on your system.

If you run into any errors while installing the application, you might have to perform a clean installation. This means that you will need to uninstall the old version of GeForce Experience.

Fix 10: Uninstall and Reinstall GeForce Experience

Once again, open the Windows Power User Menu (win + x).

1. Select Apps and Features, which should be on top of the list.
2. Search the list of Apps & Features until you find NVIDIA GeForce Experience (or search for it, using the search bar) and click on it.
3. Two buttons will appear underneath it. Click on the Uninstall button.
4. Download the latest version of NVIDIA GeForce Experience (if you haven’t already) and then install it.

This solution should be enough to fix any error that you’re experiencing with the NVIDIA GeForce Experience, whether it’s a 0x0001 or 0x0003 error code.

Here’s a quick video tutorial.

Fix 11: Update Your Display Driver

Your graphics card driver may be causing problems with the current version of GeForce Experience. Usually, you’d be able to update your driver from GeForce Experience but if it’s not working, you can’t really do that.

This means you’ll have to update the driver manually.

1. Open the Windows Power User Menu (win + X).
2. From the list of options, select Device Manager.
   [image]
3. Expand branch labelled Display Adapters. This will reveal your video card devices.
4. Right click on the NVIDIA display adapter.
5. Click on Update driver from the context menu.
   [image]
6. Click on the first option (Search automatically for updated driver software).

If Windows finds any updated driver software online, it will install it. This will take a while. If it does not, it will inform you that the best drivers for your device have already been installed.

Fix 12: Changing the Path in the Registry

For users running more than one storage device, Windows may be installing the driver software in the wrong drive. This is a common occurrence for users running an SSD as a master and an HDD as a slave.

It’s necessary for drivers to be installed on the device that’s running the operating system. Therefore, you will need to change the default location where software is installed if you find that it’s being installed on the wrong device. To do this, you will need to use the Windows Registry Editor.

1. Open the Windows Run dialog (Win + R).
2. In the Open text field, type in ‘regedit’ (without the quotation marks) and press enter.
3. Navigate through the tree to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion.
4. Make sure that you have CurrentVersion selected, not any of its children in the tree.
5. Look through all the values and make sure that each one with a directory points to a folder on the C: drive. To edit a value, just double-click on it.
6. Once you’re done, reinstall GeForce Experience and all NVidia’s drivers.

Fix 13: Start from Scratch

If you’re still encountering an error or GeForce Experience refuses to load, your final option is to uninstall everything associated with it.

This includes all NVidia drivers, as well as your graphics card driver.

1. Open the Windows Run dialog (Win + R).
2. Type ‘Control Panel’ (without inverted commas) into the open text field and press enter.
3. Make sure that you’re viewing Control Panel’s items by large or small icons, not by category.
4. Click on Programs and Features.
5. Find every program belonging to NVidia and uninstall it one by one.
6. Once this is done, you’ll need to install the NVidia drivers. You can do this by downloading them from NVidia’s drivers download page. You’ll need to search for your device’s drivers.
7. NVidia packages its Game Ready Graphics driver with NVidia GeForce Experience, the 3D Vision driver and PhysX System software. Just make sure you tick the checkbox marked ‘Perform a clean installation’ after you’ve agreed to the License Agreement.

Once you’re done installing all the tools and necessary software, restart your computer and check if GeForce Experience is running for you.

Final Thoughts

If you find that you cannot uninstall any of the software or drivers, you might have to go into Windows safe mode to do it. It is also good practice to make sure that you are using the latest Windows updates. It is one of the best ways to ensure that Windows 10 is optimized for gaming.

In this guide, we covered 13 of the best fixes for some of the most common GeForce Experience errors. If GeForce Experience refuses to load or work, you can simply use all the solutions in this guide to troubleshoot and mend it. We hope that you have found this guide to be helpful. Thank you for reading.