Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding, but has succesfully recovered

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viol37

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Hi Guys,

I recently upgraded both the motherboard and my video card and have been experiencing ongoing issues of the same symptoms with 3 of my most played games, which are BioShock, Counter-Strike Source and Crysis.

Issue will occur at random, which results in game play pausing for a few seconds then screen goes black.

Only way to get out of it is to perform a CTRL+ALT+DEL then terminate affected game via Task Manager, in which a Vista Bubble notification appears in the bottom right stating "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding, but has successfully recovered"

It seems that many people have been experiencing this issue for quite sometime (over a year) based on the searches I've done any have not been able to find any solutions.

My system specs are in my signature

Any thoughts and/or suggestions guys?

Viol37 :confused:

PS:
I'm also running the latest version of ForceWare drivers, which is 182.08, which was released last week.
 
From what I've seen it's a defective card or a power supply that's not cutting it. I had the same issue before with a defective X2.
 
RADEoN said:
From what I've seen it's a defective card or a power supply that's not cutting it. I had the same issue before with a defective X2.
Click to expand...

I don't believe that's the case, especially the latter situation considering he has a 1200W PSU.

It's a fairly common problem with ATi-based cards (driver name on that side is ATIKMDAG I believe) but a somewhat uncommon one with nVidia.

GENERALLY, you're in this situation:

You're running Vista64.
You have two monitors.
You have two different resolutions on those monitors.
You're running some type of DirectX/OpenGL game when it happens.

It's not always the case. I have heard of situations where people have run into this with just one monitor. I've heard of people with that exact setup having no problems. Regardless, there is no universal elegant solution to this. Some people have reported fixing it with a registry hack. Some people have reported fixing it with a BIOS update. Some people give up and install XP (which almost always works).

The best solution would be of course to set your two monitors to the same resolution, if you do indeed have two monitors, but that's not always possible as we don't always have identical monitors.
 
Neurofreeze said:
I don't believe that's the case, especially the latter situation considering he has a 1200W PSU.

It's a fairly common problem with ATi-based cards (driver name on that side is ATIKMDAG I believe) but a somewhat uncommon one with nVidia.

GENERALLY, you're in this situation:

You're running Vista64.
You have two monitors.
You have two different resolutions on those monitors.
You're running some type of DirectX/OpenGL game when it happens.

It's not always the case. I have heard of situations where people have run into this with just one monitor. I've heard of people with that exact setup having no problems. Regardless, there is no universal elegant solution to this. Some people have reported fixing it with a registry hack. Some people have reported fixing it with a BIOS update. Some people give up and install XP (which almost always works).

The best solution would be of course to set your two monitors to the same resolution, if you do indeed have two monitors, but that's not always possible as we don't always have identical monitors.
Click to expand...

Power supplies go bad.
 
That message is from the driver failing. It has nothing to do with a bad graphics cards. I used to get that message all the time until I upgraded my drivers and it was fine after that. The system recovers because the drivers have a built in recovery method to reload if they fail.

Fix the problem by rolling back drivers until you get a stable release, then stick with that for a few releases after the one you had fail on you. Go to nvidia's driver download site and check the beta/archive driver. Download the 182.06 and start there. Uninstall your old driver first. If you get the same message with 182.06, move to 182.05, 181.22, then 181.20. You can't go back further than that because that's when 295 support was added.
 
The message is not indicative of any specific problem. All it is saying is that the driver crashed. Why the driver crashed could be from many different reasons. Defective card, unstable OC, bad RAM, corrupted driver install, game bug, etc...

You will have to start doing stress tests and ruling out components one by one to truly find the cause.

It's a fairly common problem with ATi-based cards (driver name on that side is ATIKMDAG I believe) but a somewhat uncommon one with nVidia.
Click to expand...

Uh, false. Its not a common problem for either company's driver.
 
Beasy89 said:
This is a common issue on defective nvidia cards actually.
Click to expand...

Guys,

I'm thinking that I might just return the card and get a replacement and see how I go.

Can't tell you guys, how disappointed I am. :(
 
viol37 said:
Guys,

I'm thinking that I might just return the card and get a replacement and see how I go.

Can't tell you guys, how disappointed I am. :(
Click to expand...
Without even trying to rollback the drivers? Man, the software crashed, it happens. Try older drivers first. The newest drivers are not always 'the best'. I ran 5 month old drivers for a long time just to maintain compatibility with certain games. The rule of thumb is not to upgrade drivers unless you need the fixes because you may fix some bugs but create others. Try older drivers before you assume hardware.
 
Happens to me occasionally, not enough to bother me though. I blame it on beta drivers and a hefty GPU overclock.
 
OK this happend to me a few weeks ago when i upgraded my PSU to the new Corsair HX1000. I connected it all up and i was getting the same problem as you are. I tried everything, i even put in my old power supply as i thought that was the problem but nope, same black screen and driver failing msg was coming up.

Replaced the card with an older 8800GTS 320mb version and all was well...... try borrowing a video card of someone you know, so you can narrow it down to see if that is the culprit.

Also try this site as alot of people have different solutions in fixing this problem.
http://www.nvlddmkm.com/
 
DON'T WASTE TIME TROUBLESHOOTING THIS, RMA YOUR CARD ASAP.

I had this same problem--the screen blacking out is the give away. The graphics card is defective. It happens. Take it from me--this problem drove me crazy for six months before I finally gave in and RMA'd the card. Poof, problem gone never to be seen again. The reason why there is very little information on this and what the solution is is because there is no solution. RMA is the solution.
 
This is a common problem associated with defective nvidia cards. Nvidia cards have a high turnover rate.
 
this thing actually happen quite common on all my nVidia card in Vista 64bit, not the fact that the card is defective, it only happen on Vista for some reason..

reason still unknown, but it doesn't happen very often, so it's not really a big deal..

but if this happen very often for you, you really need to check up with ur card and drivers..

possible reverting driver to old one, I remember I had one before that make it almost completely disappear, but it happens again in 180,
 
Your problem is going to either be due to overclocks, a defective card, or memory timings (try different system RAM, or try one stick at a time).

This covers about 99% of these issues out there.

The remaining 1% or so are actual driver crashes which can be fixed by the GPU vendor only.

If you see a problem like this across a number of popular games without running any kind of odd configuration, chances are it's not a driver crash, because AMD/NVIDIA would know about it because it affects everyone and is an obvious issue which could be easily reproduced. If you only see it in one game, the odds are higher that it's an actual driver crash.


Switch memory for high quality stuff and don't overclock, see if it goes away. If not, RMA the board or switch to another board you have and see if it goes away. Trust me on this one.
 
Didn't read the thread, so I don't know if anyone mentioned this, but I got that error message when my video card overheated (a 9800GX2, at the time.) The driver would crash when my card got up above 80C, like clockwork.
 
Blackstone said:
DON'T WASTE TIME TROUBLESHOOTING THIS, RMA YOUR CARD ASAP.

I had this same problem--the screen blacking out is the give away. The graphics card is defective. It happens. Take it from me--this problem drove me crazy for six months before I finally gave in and RMA'd the card. Poof, problem gone never to be seen again. The reason why there is very little information on this and what the solution is is because there is no solution. RMA is the solution.
Click to expand...

NO! This error message is indicative of a problem SOMEWHERE. It by no means indicate a specific problem. It *COULD* be a defective card, but in the case of my friends system bad *RAM* was the problem. It *COULD* be a driver problem, or it *COULD* be a power supply issue, or it *COULD* be an unstable OC, or it *COULD* be a hundred other problems.

The fact is that this error message is extremely generic and doesn't even identify it as a problem with the video card or driver, it could be something seemingly unrelated like unstable CPU, RAM, etc... And the screen blacking out always happens when Vista recovers the driver, that is a side affect of Vista recovering from the error.
 
Yeah this is turning out exactly like every thread of these problems turns out. Everyone disagreeing on every possible cause and every possible solution. Good luck, viol37!
 
It is not a defective graphic card. It is Vista's problem. Before you return it, try this first:

Uninstall Windows update KB952287

It will solve your problem. At least it solve the this driver mystery for me.

By the way OP's display is only 1680x1050. Using a GTX 295 is overkill and waste of money. Need to get a bigger monitor 1900x1200 or bigger.
 
Thanks for the feedback guys.

I also have an update.

I have decided to return the card back to the place of purchase and will soon get a replacement.

In the meantime I am using my nVidia 8800GTS 512MB.

I have really given the card a workout by playing Crysis with all video settings on Very High with 2xAA enabled.

Game runs at very low FPS, which is expected but the purpose of the exercise is to try and replicate the issue with ""Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding, but has successfully recovered"

Good news is that I was able to play Crysis for about an hour without the issue re-occuring.

I also ran 3DMark Vantage benchmark at maximum resolution, 2xAA, 16xAF with Extreme settings and ran it in a continuous loop for a few hours and my machine did not crash once.

And finally, also using the same ForceWare driver of 182.08, which I was using with my GTX295 and so far all is OK

Keep you guys posted...
 
You may want to check out this thread as I believe your board has the same 2 caps to the left of the PCI-E X16 slot. The P5Q-E that had the problem also worked with other cards, but not the 260 GTX. I'm assuming the 295 might have the same dvi cover that hits the 2 caps.
Replacing the motherboard, or when I used a different card (non 260 GTX), on that same one it worked fine.
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1033862802
p5qand260gtxLgestle.jpg
 
While the aforementioned hardware failures are possible, they are not probable. I had the same exact issue for three months straight and I tried everything short of a format and reinstall.

At first I thought it was heat, so I used precision to speed up my fans to 90%. Then I read that anything over 65% fan speed could cause the crash so I tried that; no dice. Then I took my case cover off and aimed a box fan into my case. Still didn't work.

Then I went after my creative drivers since that was the only thing I installed prior to ugrading my video card drivers. Plus, creative drivers are HORRIBLE and never really worked anyway. That didn't do it. Finally, I did a totaly driver wipe out.

What I recommend you do is download driver cleaner, uninstall your old drivers, reboot into safe mode, run driver cleaner, reboot, install latest drivers.

If you're unsure or just want to be safe, run driver cleaner twice and make sure you get everything related to the driver manufacturer, Nvidia. Every single item. It didn't work for me until I did this. Uninstall everything Nvidia, run driver cleaner, install video card drivers, check them, install everything else, and finally profit.


One thing I also did, which I feel I must mention, was to remove windows update KB952287. To be completely candid with you, I can't remember if I did the complete reinstall and still had the issue which lead me to finding this and trying it or not. It all happened within a span of two or three days so it might behoove you to try both.

Your mileage may vary. Good luck, it was a very aggravating experience.
 
I had this exact problem.

Did a RMA on my GTX295+ now have GTX295 w/backplate.

Work flawlessly with the new card.
 
I've had this problem. Hasn't bothered me enough to do anything about it. And for the record, I'm not OCing my graphics card and my system is intel burn test stable. Also, I'm pulling about 380 watts max out of the wall under load so I seriously doubt it's my PSU as it's been there for as long as I remember. It happens much much less often now then it use to with newer drivers.
 
niceguy1234 said:
It is not a defective graphic card. It is Vista's problem. Before you return it, try this first:

Uninstall Windows update KB952287

It will solve your problem. At least it solve the this driver mystery for me.
Click to expand...

QFT
Fixed my ATIKMDAG error as well.
 
guys windows 7 fixed this issue for me.

Windows Vista was giving me this error constantly from day 1 with my 8800gt. I even called up XFX and was blaming them till I installed windows 7

As soon as i downloaded and installed windows 7, i never got it again.

I assume its just better drivers or something.

but seriously try changing up your OS real quick.
 
where can i get windows 7? Is it beta? Is it a full version?


Yes, i beleive this issue is related to vista although some ppl's solution is a different video card which is odd.

I tried various ways of installing the drivers. Then I installed SP1 after vista told me to. Used driver cleaner and let vista install my drivers. The BSOD is gone. The driver stopped working error is gone. I got one blank black screen when I booted to windows since.
 
Well this happens for me when I am playing fps. To fix I turn up my case fans. So I am thinking the gfx card is overheating and need more cooling all together Have a 8800gtx.
 
Just an update on my side. Received the same board back (didn't know at the time) and issue repeated. I received another RMA and the problem is now fixed, same as the other P5Q-E that I purchased at a seperate time. So for me it was strictly a motherboard problem (same model, bios, cmos resets would not resolve the problem board). I truly believe it was the 2 caps preventing proper installation of the video card.
 
Drivers can cause this, particularly in conjunction with certain games.

I never had this problem until I installed Sins of an Interstellar Empire a month or so ago. (dual Opteron system in sig) Then I got that message on a regular basis. The game would freeze every 20 minutes - 1 hour, minimize to the desktop, and the system displayed that message. A driver upgrade fixed it.

If it starts happening when you get a new game or change drivers check and see if it's a software problem before RMAing. Try other games, upgrade/downgrade drivers, etc. I'd probably try that anyway. Of course a hardware problem could cause this as well.
 
I have fixed this 3 times (in different systems) by replacing the video card. Each time resulted in much hair pulling, then I would format the OS drive, install everything fresh to prevent software conflicts, get the problem again, RMA the card and POOF issue was fixed once the replacement was dropped in. Sure it *could* be a lot of different things, however once you go through normal troubleshooting I suspect its just bad cards most of the time. Posted via [H] Mobile Device
 
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Whenever I got this message with my 8800gt it was due to my overclock testing it in Crysis. If the oc was to much the card would freeze and display the message. Your card was the OC version seems to me like a lacking chip slipped through QA... If you still have the card you shoulda tried downclocking it, though an rma was inevitable for you paid for an OC version.
 
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