Are they ever going to fix the "video driver stopped respond" problem in vista?

C

ctark

Weaksauce
Joined
Apr 26, 2005
Messages
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I've had the problem with both ATI and Nvidia cards. There are hundreds, if not thousands that have the same problem i'm having yet it keeps getting ignored. Nothing is ever fixed with the drivers. I had been using 64 bit for a long time and the problem would rear its ugly head after awhile. Sometimes i could get it to go away only to come back again. I finally decided to switch to 32 bit and now its started again after a week. The card i'm using is an X1900XTX if anybody is curious. I bought a 8800GTX awhile back so i wouldnt have this issue. Then to my surprise it did the same thing so i sold the card.
 
Never .. the MS cartel is too powerful.

I bought a new Toshiba notebook with Vista and GMA950. Same problem..esp when playing avi files. I wanted to install WinXP but Toshiba does not 'officially' support WinXP on my notebook and does not provide the drivers. I then proceeded to hunt the web and Toshiba's driver database for drivers..mixed and matched until i got a working system after more than a week. The sound card drivers almost made me pull my hair out!! Thanks MS ...
 
I've been running Vista 32bit for over a month now and have yet to see this problem. I guess I'm blessed by the Microsoft gods?
 
I've never even heard of this issue. I've definitely never experienced it.:confused:
 
Thats the funny thing. Some people experience it and some others dont. It seems like certain video cards just wont work no matter what. From what I've read its a TDR issue. I think TDR has to do with timings but i'm not 100 percent sure. There is a HUGE thread in the nvidia forums that got locked down that had been going for months. They started another one over there. If you goto google and type atikmdag you'll get a bunch of results. Some people buy brand new cards and that solves the problem. But I dont really want to replace my x1900xtx yet. I'm thinking about going back to XP. There are only a few things in Vista that I really like over XP and I think I can live without them for now.
 
What you are describing is problem with driver not with OS - driver simply stopped responding/working. When same thing happens in XP it causes BSOD.
 
I never had the problem in XP. I've had this card since launch and ran it for a year under XP and its never been an issue. I am aware that this problem does happen in XP. But it has grown exponentially in Vista.
 
ctark said:
I've had the problem with both ATI and Nvidia cards. There are hundreds, if not thousands that have the same problem i'm having yet it keeps getting ignored. Nothing is ever fixed with the drivers. I had been using 64 bit for a long time and the problem would rear its ugly head after awhile. Sometimes i could get it to go away only to come back again. I finally decided to switch to 32 bit and now its started again after a week. The card i'm using is an X1900XTX if anybody is curious. I bought a 8800GTX awhile back so i wouldnt have this issue. Then to my surprise it did the same thing so i sold the card.
Click to expand...

Never heard of this problem. I have run both ati and nvidia with no probs.
 
ctark said:
I've had the problem with both ATI and Nvidia cards. There are hundreds, if not thousands that have the same problem i'm having yet it keeps getting ignored. Nothing is ever fixed with the drivers. I had been using 64 bit for a long time and the problem would rear its ugly head after awhile. Sometimes i could get it to go away only to come back again. I finally decided to switch to 32 bit and now its started again after a week. The card i'm using is an X1900XTX if anybody is curious. I bought a 8800GTX awhile back so i wouldnt have this issue. Then to my surprise it did the same thing so i sold the card.
Click to expand...

This isn't just a specific problem as you described it ("the problem"). This is what happens when the display driver crashes. There are millions of reasons this could happen. It's extremely likely that something else is wrong with your system though if you have it that often on ATI and NVIDIA both, though.
 
90% of the time that means the driver isn't working with the application, and the driver code fails. Vista will pick up the pieces and restart the driver after a quick black out. I was having it when I pushed my video cards in games like WiC and other games that are vram intensive.

The newest beta drivers for nvidia have resolved my driver crash issues. I had a feeling it was mostly due to the 8600 GTS's in SLI that was causing the problem. Not sure I have heard ATI really suffering from this issue.
 
ctark said:
I've had the problem with both ATI and Nvidia cards. There are hundreds, if not thousands that have the same problem i'm having yet it keeps getting ignored. Nothing is ever fixed with the drivers. I had been using 64 bit for a long time and the problem would rear its ugly head after awhile. Sometimes i could get it to go away only to come back again. I finally decided to switch to 32 bit and now its started again after a week. The card i'm using is an X1900XTX if anybody is curious. I bought a 8800GTX awhile back so i wouldnt have this issue. Then to my surprise it did the same thing so i sold the card.
Click to expand...

It is not a problem with Vista, it is a problem with your hardware. I run ATi drivers on my Vista64 machine and I've never had that problem, even overclocked I've never had that problem.

Might want to see where the problem might be coming from, because all Microsoft is doing is telling you there is a definite problem and you need to take care of it.
 
Its 100% the driver. My mom's laptop has this problem, the driver that it came with was fine till you played a game and it would constantly go black and say the driver stopped responding. If I updated the drivers it would stop the problem but I had strange flickering on the screen, I reverted back to the old driver since I don't play games on it.
 
I'd uninstall your drivers, run driver sweeper AND driver cleaner in safe mode, then redownload the latest drivers and install.
 
Like others have pointed out, it's a symptom that indicates there is a problem somewhere that could be due to many things.

It's a bit like saying, "I wish they would fix BSOD, freezes,lockups and reboots in XP".
 
i have same issue but only when i push my video card too much in OCing or when im playing old games
 
I had the problem with the driver stopped working 3 times while playing UT3 yesterday. It is often related to the application its being used at. But afterall the problem is in vista and display drivers not working like they should.
 
I used to see a bunch of these but haven't gotten them in months. On my system it was tied to an overly ambitious overclock.
 
I've seen a variant on this problem in Vista-64 Ultimate. It's rare (think 2 weeks between occurrences) and only happens when I'm gaming. The trick, though, is that it rarely causes the game to crash. What I see is a "hitch" in the games for a few seconds. The screen goes black for an instant (maybe a second) and then the game continues. It's only after I leave the game that I see an alert on the lower right that tells me that the video driver recovered from a problem.

I'm using an Nvidia 7900 GT video card and have seen this across a variety of Vista drivers.
 
ctark said:
I've had the problem with both ATI and Nvidia cards. There are hundreds, if not thousands that have the same problem i'm having yet it keeps getting ignored. Nothing is ever fixed with the drivers. I had been using 64 bit for a long time and the problem would rear its ugly head after awhile. Sometimes i could get it to go away only to come back again. I finally decided to switch to 32 bit and now its started again after a week. The card i'm using is an X1900XTX if anybody is curious. I bought a 8800GTX awhile back so i wouldnt have this issue. Then to my surprise it did the same thing so i sold the card.
Click to expand...

it stopped on my Vista after I updated to latest whql nv drivers for Vista, and update Vista as frequent as u can too
 
I hate it when people say that since they dont have problems then that means there isnt an issue. There IS an issue. Go look at the nvidia forums or google atikmdag. Somebody is responsible for this. Whether its Microsoft or ATI/Nvidia or motherboard manufacturers i dont know. Someone told me they switched to an intel board and the problem went away. They were running a 680i board at the time.
 
I had the same issue when I ran Vista32 with my current rig. Rolled back to XP and everything feels faster and better and wonder of wonders...no more problems of any kind :D

If you want Vista go out and install XP. Thats the moral.
 
I only had this issue right after Vista (final) was released, and of course during the RC releases....but as of now, this thing has been rock solid for a few months....8800GTS and Vista....
 
Is anyone besides me still having this problem? Is there a clear-cut solution? I've used the 169.25 and 169.28 NVidia drivers and it hasn't helped.
 
I hate to say it, but things may even get worse with SP1.

SP1 implements a new powersaving mode that turns on when the screen is not actively changing (IE: not playing games or DVD's) While most new hardware works fine with it, it does add an extra level of complexity.

I think its some sort of new signalling, sort of like an Mpeg over HDMI, where if the data has not changed in the last frame it simply sends a handful of bytes (greatly reducing power) over the connection saying "no change" and can let the vidcard stay in a deeper sleep state.

What people may try to do is to turn off sleep modes for all of their active peripherals and disable all the ones that are not used. This will reduce the chance the computer will go into a sleep mode that it cannot get out of.
 
The dreaded nvlddmkm.dll error !! I fought that tooth and nail a day after Orange Box went retail, and I eventually tracked down my issues to a stick of Buffalo Firestix RAM that had gone bad.
I had tried all of the recommended software fixes, but as soon as I swapped in a pair of Super Talent sticks my problems went away. I had received the error over 50 times in three days, and it was even crashing in 2D at the end of that time period.
If you've exhausted all of the driver video display options, try and run Memtest on your RAM to see if that isn't the root of the problem.
 
I only get it when I push my OC too hard. It beats a BSOD or hard lock. I have only seen it a few times playing games, but I believe it is related to poor drivers or games that Vista x64 doesn't like too much.
 
RangerSVT said:
It is not a problem with Vista, it is a problem with your hardware. I run ATi drivers on my Vista64 machine and I've never had that problem, even overclocked I've never had that problem.

Might want to see where the problem might be coming from, because all Microsoft is doing is telling you there is a definite problem and you need to take care of it.
Click to expand...

/signed

It is a hardware problem. I was able to, through some tweaking, introduce and remove this problem from my system. I found it to be a problem of a USB header shorting. For you it could be literally anything.

I would mostly suggest you strip your computer down to just the basics and then slowly start adding things. I mean basics like unplug everything but power from Motherboard. Only have 1HD, 1Vid Card, and maybe even just 1Stick of ram. Then go through and add things slowly. When you start having the problem again, backtrack and eliminate the issue.

This is the process I went through, trust me it was annoying and it took a long time, but I was able to figure out what everyone was complaining about.
 
i think i've had this once and it was caused by the incompatability of Audigy cards with Crysis..
 
ZenOps said:
I hate to say it, but things may even get worse with SP1.

SP1 implements a new powersaving mode that turns on when the screen is not actively changing (IE: not playing games or DVD's) While most new hardware works fine with it, it does add an extra level of complexity.

I think its some sort of new signalling, sort of like an Mpeg over HDMI, where if the data has not changed in the last frame it simply sends a handful of bytes (greatly reducing power) over the connection saying "no change" and can let the vidcard stay in a deeper sleep state.

What people may try to do is to turn off sleep modes for all of their active peripherals and disable all the ones that are not used. This will reduce the chance the computer will go into a sleep mode that it cannot get out of.
Click to expand...

I've been running Vista x64 SP1 RTM (the one that just shipped) for about a week now and I've not had any problems thus far...
 
I only get this when overclocking my video card too much. I never, ever got it on an Nvidia card (It would just hard lock :p). There are a huge list of possible causes of problems like this, ranging from a faulty card, to bad memory, to driver and application issues. I doubt it will ever be "fixed" because so many things can cause a driver to stop responding, some of which is outside the realm of software.

The best thing you can do is to not use an Nvidia motherboard :p
 
I had that problem last week. Running Vista Home Premium x64. After browsing nVidia's forums a solution they suggested was setting the system ram to normal speed. I had my 4 GB Kit over clocked just a bit @ 850 MHZ. I backer her down to 800 MHZ and the problem has not come back since.
 
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