nvlddmkm issues. Videocard/driver or other hardware issue?

[l337*g0at]

Okay. Hi all. I'm posting this in General Hardware, since I do not know what the heck is going on here. If this needs to be in a different thread, please put where it belongs.
I recently built a new system. The Specs are listed below:

Q6600 @ stock (2.4)
2x2GB OCZ Hyper DDR2
Evga nForce 780i sli mobo
evga 8800gts g80 (640mb)
750watt pc power & cooling psu.
750GB Seagate sata
sony dru-710a dvd burner (ide)
samsung 20x sata dvd burner
X64 Vista Ultimate

The problem started a few days after the build. I came home from work, and turned on the monitor to see artifacts all over the screen.
I didn't know what the heck happened. I looked around and saw that windows updated itself with some new stuff, so I started thinking maybe
that was the problem. Now in a 10 minute period, my screen goes black atleast 30 times and comes back on and tells me that
nvlddmkm has shut down and restarted itself.

I googled "nvlddmkm reboots" and see that tons of people are having this problem on forums all across the internet. so, i decided to come
to the best forums around. anyways, i have lowered all the clocks on my gpu to almost the lowest they will go, and things seem to be a bit more stable.

i'm now on the 169 drivers (latest from nvidia)
ive tried older drivers, and the 171 or whatever the beta ones are.

this after a format later.
im now running riva tuner 2.06 to up the fan to 100% when windows starts up thinking it might be heat related, even though i've got more 120mm fans than
i should be able to fit in a stacker 810. ive got one 120mm flowing air over it, a spot cooling fan blowing over the side of it, and another coming from
the bottom mesh blowing to the top of it, and plenty of exhaust. i can literally feel the airflow inside my case when i stick my hands in there.

so, thus far i have now ruled out the ram and the heating issue (pretty sure)
ive taken out the ram and tried each single stick seperatly and done a memtest and things came out perfectly fine. no errors what-so-ever.

my psu has thee 6pin pci-e rails, so i have tried all of those too, and i still get the same error everynow and then, but a bit less often.

im on my second install now, and have windows updated to all the patches, and i have applied / downloaded every windows vista nvidia hotfix that windows would
let me apply to my system.

still the same issue. screen goes black for a second, comes back on with the message of nvlddmkm restarted itself and has sucessfully restarted.

so, what the hell?

anyone else having this issue, and have any suggestions or a fix to this ? or am i going to have to uninstall the nvidia drivers, use standard windows
drivers, and wait for a fix ?

i was thinking about trying to rma the card, but since i dont know if this is the card, since i doubt this many people would be having this issue.



please help if you know of anyone like me having this issue. i know it exists even on xp systems, but i think everything is x64 related.
ive even heard of a few people having this issue on ati cards after they switched from nvidia to ati and didnt wipe out the nvidia drivers 100%

any suggestions or other things i might not have thought about would be great to hear! im losing my mind after dropping $1400 and not being able to do squat.

-g0at

 

[FRAGizm]

Had this too, come to find out files were still on PC from old drivers, and on top of that when u install the new drivers, Vista update tells u theres one from Dec that is optional, do not install this bc ull have more than 2 drivers on there and will cause it.

Simply you have old and new drivers on there. You have to completly remove them with naughty driver cleaner, works the best IMHO.

 

[officermartinez]

I had this issue too. That's exactly what I was going to recommend. I used Driver Cleaner Pro but really any GOOD driver remover program can work wonders.

 

[133]

I get this error sometimes. I solved it by turning down AA & AF in TF2. It only happened when i played that game.

 

[FRAGizm]

I had this issue too. That's exactly what I was going to recommend. I used Driver Cleaner Pro but really any GOOD driver remover program can work wonders.

Found that Driver Cleaner Pro didnt clean everything out..So thats why I recommended the other program. Also you might have to go into your files and manually delete/search files to make sure files/folders are wiped. And you dont have to do it in Safe Mode as peeps claim, doesnt matter.. Let us know if your problem is solved bc lot of people do have this problem and many dont realize whats it about.