ANy fix for this yet? Display driver stopped responding...

rbarr110

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 8, 2003
Messages
278
Ok, I recently built (last 2 weeks or so) a new PC with a Gigabyte ATI 5850 card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125318

I did a fresh install of Win7 Pro x64 with the Catalyst 10.4 AMD drivers. I am constatnly getting this error whenever I play games:
"AMD Display driver has stopped responding and has successfully recovered"

Also, the background of the desktop goes black when exiting games (icons on desktop still there, but wallpaper is gone.) I have been searching google and it sounds like it is a driver issue, that both Nvidia and ATI have in some cases with 64bit operating systems. It also seems like alot of people dont have the issue.

Any help on how I can fix it? I havent OC'd the card, but it is stock OC'd, and unfortunately is voltage locked.

AMD Phenom x4 955BE
MSI 890GXM-G65
Gigabyte GV-R585OC-1GD
G.SKILL 4GB DDR3 1600-PC3 12800
Corsair 650W Power Supply
 
It could be a number of things, and most likely it isn't a software problem.

For starters, it could be:
Bad RAM
Bad video card
Unstable CPU (not likely if you aren't overclocked)

Start running all sorts of various hardware stress tests and see if you can pinpoint the problem. I would start with memtest myself. If that comes up clean I would RMA the card.
 
I have this problem with a computer (Win7 32bit, Geforce6800gs) I connect to remotely using Tight vnc. It occurs on the user account with standard access and the aero theme, but not the user account with admin access and with the basic theme. I haven't really bothered to fix it, since I rarely remote into the standard/aero on account. Just some related information, not sure if it helps or not.
 
i have this problem when my 285 GTX FTW SLI get too hot: 83'C-85'C

"nVidia Display driver has stopped responding and has successfully recovered"


BTW, it's factory OC'd too and is also voltage-locked. You can try dowcloking the speeds on the card (it helped me).
 
I tried downclocking, however the core wont go lower than the factory OC, only a little higher. The memory has a broad range for over/underclocking but that hasnt done anything. I dont think the temp is getting too hot, because the driver issue happens anywhere from 5 seconds into the game to 10 minutes, and when I alt-tab to the CCC monitor, the temp is low 40's C.

I pulled the card and used the onboard video, ATI 4290, and it had the same issue but worse. I ran memtest on the memory which is marketed as 1600 PC3 12800, which uses a 4:1 multiplier. It passed several run throughs at the 1600 mark as well as the lowered 1200 mark (3.33:1 multiplier).

One thing I still need to test, is that when I ran the memory at 1200 and not the higher 1600, I dont believe the onboard 4290 had any of the driver errors. So I will put the 5850 back in and test with the memory at 1200 and see what happens. Assuming that fixes the issue with the driver error, I will try back at 1600 and bump the voltage to the memory and see if that helps (believe it is at 1.5V, maybe push to 1.6).

I went ahead and got the newegg RMA process started, kudos to newegg for letting me still get the RMA in even though I am past the 30 day limit (by 1 day, but technically still over :rolleyes: )

I'll keep you posted.
 
I had this problem with BFBC2, constantly crashing. I tried tons of different driver configurations but finally figured out it was a bad OC on my RAM. Fixed the timings and haven't had it happen since.
 
I had this problem with BFBC2, constantly crashing. I tried tons of different driver configurations but finally figured out it was a bad OC on my RAM. Fixed the timings and haven't had it happen since.

I'm assuming you're talking about your video RAM? I'm also looking for a fix..
 
I'm assuming you're talking about your video RAM? I'm also looking for a fix..

Based on the statement "Fixed the timings" I would think it is system ram, not video ram (I could be wrong).

I dont think you can tweak timings on video ram, just its effective memory clock (1000mhz to 1050mhz, etc).
 
My setup is somewhat similar to yours and I've been running BFBC2 with no problems. Never seen that error message yet. *Knocks on wood*.

Couldn't hurt to also make sure your Mo/bo BIOS is up to date.
 
Well I ran some tests with my memory set to lower levels and the errors are still here. Also, unless I tell BFBC2 to run in DX9, it goes to a gray/white screen within the forst 2 minutes of launching the game. Even in DX9 it will occaisionally got to the gray screen, just not as fast.

I guess I will still RMA the card and hope the replacement works.

MINOR UPDATE: I have got the display driver error only once in 3 hrs of play with the lower ram settings, however BFBC2 still crashes out to a gray screen about as fast as I can launch it. Should I still RMA the card? I havent figured out all the issues yet, but IS MUCH BETTER at the moment. Still havent upped the ram voltages yet.
 
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I get the same problem with Flash (HD 5830, 10.4). Found out that Flash doesn't like full hardware speed when using hardware acceleration. It does fine when using a low-clocked 2d mode (300/900), but if I have a speed forced by afterburner and it's keeping that speed in Windows desktop, flash 10.1 no likey at all.
 
MINOR UPDATE: I have got the display driver error only once in 3 hrs of play with the lower ram settings, however BFBC2 still crashes out to a gray screen about as fast as I can launch it. Should I still RMA the card? I havent figured out all the issues yet, but IS MUCH BETTER at the moment. Still havent upped the ram voltages yet.

You have two issues:

1) BSOD: That seems to be caused by an unstable memory OC
2) GSOD (gray screen of death): So far that seems to be a card problem, so RMA your card
 
You have two issues:

1) BSOD: That seems to be caused by an unstable memory OC
2) GSOD (gray screen of death): So far that seems to be a card problem, so RMA your card

Just for clarification, I have not yet had one BSOD. I guess technically the memory is "overclocked" but I am pretty sure I am not pushing the memory beyond what it is labeled/marketed as.
G.SKILL 4GB DDR3 1600-PC3 12800

I have"underclocked" the ram down from 1600 to 1200 and still have the "Display driver stopped responding and has recovored" issue, just not as frequently.

The GSOD, well that is insane how quick it happens. It goes to a gray screen but the mouse still can move, the game audio is still playing. I can ctrl-alt-del and launch taskmanager and end task to get out of the game. So I have not had any complete lock ups.

But at this point, I think I should RMA the video card, beacuse I am still early enough that an RMA with Newegg is the fastest replacement option. I have 2 days before the prepaid UPS label expires to try and see if my memory is an issue before sending the card back. I did run memtest on the memory and it has come up as not an issue as far as the memtest is concerned.

:confused: :(
 
Is your CPU or System RAM overclocked at all?

If underclocking the VRAM memory helps, then I'd still lean towards a bad card.
 
Is your CPU or System RAM overclocked at all?

If underclocking the VRAM memory helps, then I'd still lean towards a bad card.

No I havent overclocked a thing, the only thing that is overclocked is the 5850, but that is a factory overclock. I flushed out all my drivers and reinstalled 10.4 and I can now underclock the videocard core, for some reason the previous install was at 765 lowest setting and maxed at 775. I think the range now is 500-850 ish.

The note above is about the system ram that I was running at its marketed speeds, in my mind not an overclock if its rated and sold as an item capable of running the higher speeds. I have underclocked the system ram to lower speeds, still get the errors, just not as frequently.
 
SOLVED!.... MAYBE....ok not fully resolved yet.

Well I think the problem may be over, I havent switched to the 10.5 drivers yet, but things seem to be working fine now with 10.4 and a few BIOS tweaks of the system ram. I havent done any extensive testing yet, but an initial 30 min game of BFBC2 all things seem fine even with DX11.

I went ahead and posted for some support at teh GSkill forum, did the tweaks I was planning and a couple their admin recomended.

http://www.gskill.us/forum/showthread.php?t=5243

What I did:

I went into the BIOS and manually entered in the 9-9-9-24 timings, set TRC=40, increased the NB multiplier to x11 (up to 2200 over the stock 2000). I upped the CPU-NB voltage by +0.10V, increased the system ram voltage from 1.6 to 1.67, and went back to the 4:1 multiplier for 1600.


So far so good, needs more testing to be sure.

update1: After about 40 more minutes of BFBC2, I got the gray screen again, game is still playing in the background, but I just a gray screen. Video card RMA time.

update2: I have now had both times of crashes/errors again, substantially less frequent, but still happening.
 
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FINAL UPDATE - RESOLVED

I received my new 5850, now BFBC2 is running perfectly, no more crashes.

The "Display driver stopped responding" error has also gone away due to the following "fix":

For whatever reason the memry I purchased G.SKILL 4GB DDR3 1600-PC3 12800 9-9-9-24, even though set to those specs, would cause the error every couple of minutes. I dropped the memory down to 9-9-9-24 1333 and the error still happened but rather than every couple minutes, it was once every 10 minutes or so. I dropped it again to 9-9-9-24 1200, and the system now runs stable.

I should have bought slower ram, based on the motherboards tested lists, few modules were approved at 1333 and 1600. They also had a disclaimer and said others may work but since there are so many makes/models of ram out there they all cant be tested, apparently what I got would be on the fail side at 1333 and 1600.
 
You might also add that your motherboard compatability list shows only (3) types of OCZ and (1) kind of EKMEMORY at the 1600Mhz speed. Also they only show it as viable with 2 DIMMs as opposed to 4.
 
You might also add that your motherboard compatability list shows only (3) types of OCZ and (1) kind of EKMEMORY at the 1600Mhz speed. Also they only show it as viable with 2 DIMMs as opposed to 4.

wow, what a POS
 
You might also add that your motherboard compatability list shows only (3) types of OCZ and (1) kind of EKMEMORY at the 1600Mhz speed. Also they only show it as viable with 2 DIMMs as opposed to 4.

Based upon the newegg reviews I read, there are at least 3 other people who used the same memory and motherboard with ZERO problems. I believe that maybe it is the memory that is bad.

I wouldnt necessarily blame the motherboard, just because there were only 3 on the list at 1600, doesnt mean that those are the only modules it can handle. Those maybe were just the ones that have been tested up to this point.
 
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Try installing .net 4.0 then Cat 10.5.

That won't do anything. Catalyst uses .NET 2.0, and the .NET 4.0 installer doesn't include older versions. Meaning if you install .NET 4.0 on XP, for instance, you still can't run .NET 2.0 apps (or even .NET 3.5). Vista and Windows 7 both include .NET 2.0, so installing newer versions of .NET for Catalyst is useless.
 
LAST AND FINAL UPDATE:

I have RMA'd the memory with G.Skill and have received the replacement set. I installed the memory and everything works perfectly fine. The initial set of memory must have had some issues even though memtest did not produce any errors. Hardware error, and not driver problems.
 
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