Nvlddmkm stopped responding is getting VERY OLD...

[methimpikehoses]

I think its from OCing as well. Never get it unless I'm OCing hardware and have a voltage wrong or have the GPU clock/mem too high.

[Lfctony]

Tim']I've seen loads of systems identical to mine, so yea. What else can it be? Hm?

Mate, believe what you want to believe. Just pray that it doesn't happen to you. That's all...

[HYBRID]

I made a few post on this thread with regards to getting this error.


I have not recieved the error in a while and hope it never rears it's ugly head. The only thing I can say is that it happened a lot during Enemy Territory a game that has a lot of age and no longer really supported.

I moved on to QWars, and since the latest driver revisions it has not shown its head roughly 2 months now.
So I think for me it may just have been ET not playing nice with the earlier drivers, and or a combination of BIOS, drivers maturing for Vista just a guess.

[tb77]

the only solution for me was: (had the error on 2 systems, athlon x2 4800 and q6600) try ntune and reduce you video card clocks (memory and gpu) - i had a bfg 8800 gtx oc2. now it runs at 600/1400/900 instead of 626/1400/1000. so it simply was an overheating issue! try crysis gpu benchmark for an hour or 3dmark06 for 8 hours.

Thomas

[Greg]

Do other people see some screen corruption sometimes just before this issue occurs?

It does look a bit like an overheating problem, but I have reasonable ventilation and am not overclocking anything. I say this because I noticed in Cyrsis that sometimes the sky or screen changes color or gets some jagged line paterns just before the blank. If I bring up the main menu, the screen corruption goes back to normal and the game does not crash at that point. My CPU temp is 48degC and the room is 28degC at this time.

Edit: I'm still interested in knowing if others have the visible screen corruption but I have now read several hundred posts in varios forums to learn this is a very common problem. As an experiment on heat, I ran nTune to watch temps. In Crysis, the driver crashed almost overy time the temperature got over 95degC. I did that three times. Then I opened the case and ran the fan at 100%. The temps never went much over 80degC and I didn't get a single crash for 45mins of play (when I stopped playing). Certainly not a guaranteed fix, but an interesting way to reduce crash frequency perhaps, without re-installing XP.

[LORD-eX-Bu]

I would sometimes see some screen corruption. When I asked MSI about it and told them about some screen corruption they told me that the memory on the card was bad and issued me a RMA number immediately.

I had my new card in less than a week and haven't had the error since.

[Buckeye]

Back when this did happen to me I was just at the desktop and started up IE, and I had not run any games. Nothing was OC'd, temps were normal.

My post is like way, way back in this thread when it happened to me.

[parecon]

For what its worth, I only recieved this error while playing Lost Planet. And I got it all the time! But no others games give me this error except Lost Planet. And yes Greg, the screen would turn bluish, almost like a negative color effect and start to spread, pretty much like artifiacting, then the error would happen. I remember sometimes playing Lost Planet I would stop it from happening from backing off when I saw the slightest artifact. But seriously, in the end it would happen no matter what in that game.

Using all the latest beta drivers, Vista 64 Ultimate almost all the window updates.

[Greg]

Thanks for the responses folks. I see my version of this issue is shared by other people with different hardware.

After reading hundreds of forum posts from all over the web, and spending many hours running tests, I have these comments:

1) The 'Nvlddmkm Stopped responding' event occurs for a variety of reasons. They are NOT all the same issue.

2) These issues occur for many people with very different hardware and drivers. eg. 8600 SLI, 8800GTX, 8800GT, 8800GTS. Different brand Video cards. With different RAM 1-4 gb, different RAM speeds, MB brands, CPU types. Different PSUs. No overclocking on any HW.

3) This issue seems to mostly occur with geforce 8 series running in Vista. It appears to more frequently occur on high spec PCs running games at high detail. (More frequently only, as people also report the occurrence just in Windows or on application start.)

4) The issue is mostly intermittent (hard to repro 100%) so people think they have a fix, but are mistaken.

5) In MY case, there appears to be a strong correlation between GPU temperature and this issue occurring in Crysis. I see the crash occurs when temp reaches ~95degC. In MY case, using nTune to increase fan speed causes the fan to run audibly louder, and immediately drop the GPU temperature 15-20 or so degC. Crysis has never crashed when I have done that, but will otherwise crash in 1-10 minutes without touching controls.
Because of this observation, unless I have a unique HW fault, it appears the driver does not raise the fan speed in line with the temperature. If it did raise the fan speed correctly, I would not hear have to raise it manually to get the same effect (louder fan, cooler GPU).

[DarkOneX]

I had this problem back with my eVGA 7900GT when I first went to Vista32. Later I went to Vista64 and replaced the card with an eVGA 8800GTS 320MB and still had the problem very often, mainly when browsing the web and watching videos. Found that Dreamscene caused it all the time so uninstalled that and also around the same time installed some new drivers and the problem went away and never came back....that is until I got my eVGA 8800 GT SSC 512MB. Installed that on a Friday and it appeared to work OK Fri and Sat then Sunday it started giving me those errors all over the place, pretty much nonstop, to the point I couldn't even boot back up into Windows without it happening nonstop. Had to boot into Safe Mode and uninstall drivers. Also during this time I was getting red checkerboard crap on the screen during reboot even on BIOS screen. I submit and RMA and got my new eVGA 8800GT SSC 512MB installed a week ago and it hasn't happened again, this card is running like a champ. So I believe that Dreamscene and drivers too probably was causing my probs when I first installed both times and my first 8800GT issues was probably just a bad card.

[FlakMagnet]

I had an issue with a BFG 8800 GTX which was locking up with total screen corruption in Crysis DX10. Everything was fine when UNDERCLOCKING the RAM on the card to 792MHz (down from 900 stock).

Card has been RMA'd and am waiting for a replacement.

[ehathgepiurhe]

Hi everyone,

Apologies for the long post. This error seems to have a different cause on every single PC it occurs on, but I thought I would post the apparent solution to the error on my PC, just for anyone who has tried everything else without success and has a similar config to mine (in this case, NOD32 installed - if you don't have NOD32 installed, you can probably stop reading). I say apparent, because the error hasn't happened since I made this change - I think only a nVidia driver engineer could be absolutely sure it was the cause. I have a 8800GTX card, and I dual boot on my PC: XP and Vista. The single cause of this error was games: and specifically it only happened with some games (this was under Vista, I have only recently reinstalled XP).

The game that would most set the error off was Crysis - specifically Crysis in DX10 mode (couldn't get it to happen in DX9 mode). It did happen once in Call of Duty 4 (right at the end of the game) though. Anyway, the problem on my PC seems to be my anti-virus. In this case, NOD32. I have excluded the Crysis installation folder from the background NOD32 scan, and I haven't had the error since. How I noticed this was that when I recently reinstalled XP, I installed NOD32 a few days after I had started playing Crysis on it (in DX9 obviously, as XP only supports DX9 in Crysis). During this few days, no errors. Then, I installed NOD32, started up Crysis and bang - the game froze less than 30 seconds into the level. I then rebooted, tried again, and got 3-4 minutes play this time before the game froze. I then remembered I had installed NOD32 just recently, and rather than uninstall it, just excluded Crysis folder from the background scan - and no more freezes :)

I then booted into Vista and tried the same thing - and the same effect so far (no nvlddmkm errors). I've played a lot on XP, and I haven't had the error so I'm certain that the cause under XP is NOD32. I have only played a few hours tonight on Vista after excluding the installation folder, but no errors so far. Fingers crossed, but I am reasonably sure the cause is the same on Vista.

Just three things to note:
1. The error on Vista is the nvlddmkm.sys error. When this happens to me, my PC hard locks. Vista claims to have recovered, but a blue screen shortly occurs and I have to reset. Under XP, there is no error - Crysis just freezes. However, you can alt+tab back to Windows and kill crysis.exe with Task Manager - and continue working in Windows without rebooting. So interesting how XP and Vista handle the error differently.

2. The version of NOD32. I installed NOD32 v2.7 on XP, and this is the version I have excluded from scanning Crysis on Vista as well. I know it is not the latest version - but under Vista, I had a later v3 installed. I realised when I went to add Crysis to the exclusion under Vista that there was a later v3 released. So, I uninstalled NOD32, downloaded the latest version and reinstalled it. This was a mistake - as soon as I booted back into Vista, I found that NOD32 had hard locked my PC. A reset was required, and every time I booted into Vista, the PC was instantly hard locked. I then went into Safe Mode, removed NOD32 from startup, booted into normal Vista, then uninstalled NOD32 v3. That solved the hard locking problem. I then reinstalled v2.7 of NOD32, and haven't had a problem with it so far. I did straight away exclude Crysis from the scan though, and haven't had the nvlddmkm error since. Moral of the story is that I don't believe that the version of NOD32 is important - I believe that both v2.7 and v3 cause the nvlddmkm.sys error.

3. Lastly, why do some games like FEAR never suffer from the error, Call of Duty 4 does the once and Crysis every single time I play it (only the time into the game changes)? My theory is that it is related to the stresses on your PC at the time combined with the background NOD32 scanning. My PC was only purchased earlier this year, it's fairly beefy (Quad Core Intel, 768MB 8800GTX VGA card, 4GB RAM etc). My theory is that even on absolute full settings, FEAR doesn't stress my PC in the slightest (FEAR is my favourite ever FPS, I play it a lot and I have never had the error once, even under Vista). Call of Duty 4 is a DX9 game (like FEAR), but being newer, stresses your PC more. The error in Call of Duty 4 on my PC happened once, right at the end of the game, where a million Russians are on screen at the same time shooting at you. Every other part of the game only has a few enemies, but this is the part with the most on screen at any one time, which I think is significant.

Now, to Crysis: it auto-detects my PC as very high and framerate is between 10-15 FPS. It is a PC killer to put it simply. My theory is that if you are just walking through some long grass or similar on Crysis with no enemies on screen, the PC will not be stressed enough to cause the NOD32 scanning to cause the error - but if you get into a battle with a bunch of Korean's, all bets are off. So, basically I think that NOD32 only causes the error when my PC is under a bit of stress - I have never received the error just at the Windows desktop like some, or with DreamScene like others. Only in games. And then only in certain games. With Crysis, when playing on DX9, the graphics settings are only set to a maximum of high - so less stress on your PC, less chance of NOD32 causing the error (and thus why I never received the error in Vista under DX9, only under DX10). When playing on DX10, the settings are set to very high, thus more stress on your PC and probably enough to push it over the limit where the error occurs.

Anyway, I hope this post helps someone else, it's a very very frustrating error to have, especially when you can only game for about 5 minutes before it occurs :(

Regards,

CM

[JerseySeven]

5) In MY case, there appears to be a strong correlation between GPU temperature and this issue occurring in Crysis. I see the crash occurs when temp reaches ~95degC.

Maybe temp in your case. But I think you are correct in saying there may be a variety of causes.

I set up RivaTuner to adjust the fan speed on my 8800GTX. Played Bioshock, and Crysis over the last week without ever seeing this error. Temps (based on hardware monitoring of the GPU) never got above 65 C while playing Crysis, High settings+shader tweaks, 2xAA @ 1440x900 [slightly better frame rate than 1680x1050 with no AA]).

Then, last night I played a little Hellgate London. Five minutes into the game I got my very first Nvlddmkm error. Happened during some heavy action when the screen froze and the in-game scene was replaced by the Hellgate logo. I tried minimizing the game and thats when an info box with the "Nvlddmkm stopped responding" error popped up. GPU temps in that game never get above 60 C on my system.

Rebooted and played another hour of Hellgate without seeing the problem. In this case, it seems to have been a result of whatever caused the game to freeze, not the cause of the freeze.

(169.00 Nvidia drivers; Intel 6700 Core 2; 4 GB ram; Vista Ultimate 64bit - freshly re-installed a week ago (clean install not update) with the latest chipset and soundcard drivers and Windows updates / hotfixes; Nov 2007 DirectX update.)

[jeffmd]

I had this error for many weeks now, however in vista it was giving the driver error. I installed winxp on another partition and the games just locked right up. Upon removing one of my 2 stick of ram, no more crashs. Currently I have them out on RMA and my main system is down, and thanks to ups nice little 3 days cant do shiat weekend, itll be a couple weeks before i get em back. ^^

[Greg]

Maybe temp in your case. But I think you are correct in saying there may be a variety of causes.
...
I think I'm experiencing 2 differnt types of this crash. One is over heating, the other is something different. I can repro the overheating one every time, within 10 minutes. But when the fan is set to 100%, my temps stay around 65-70deg in Crysis, and I still get the nvlddmkm, but on very rare occasions. With the overheating, I see screen corruption just before the crash, with the other, no corruption at all.

[LochJess]

i've been getting the Nvlddmkm stopped responding error for guitar hero 3 since i first started playing and i'm starting to get tired of it. this computer is about 4 months old so i figured i wouldn't have to many problems with it... also when i try to play Crysis it always says crysis has stopped responding and it does this every time i play and when i do get to play i have low frames even when running it on all low settings. can someone help me out with either problem?

[$n][pErMan]

Now getting this all the time in FSX... **** you nvidia.. release some decent drivers for a change.. this is pissing me off. Seems to be related to 64-bit Vista... never had this issue in 32-bit.

[LORD-eX-Bu]

had this error in Vista 32, haven't seen it since April of last year... *knock on wood*

[$n][pErMan]

Seems to be only happening in FSX for me.... WTF. Never had this error before I formatted and went to 64-bit.... maybe its the drivers? 169.25 is what I am currently using. Can play Crysis and COD4 without end... but after about 30 minutes of FSX I get this gay ass error :mad:

[Amuro]

[pErMan']Seems to be only happening in FSX for me.... WTF. Never had this error before I formatted and went to 64-bit.... maybe its the drivers? 169.25 is what I am currently using. Can play Crysis and COD4 without end... but after about 30 minutes of FSX I get this gay ass error :mad:
Have you appled all the hotfixes list on nvidia's site?
http://www.nvidia.com/object/windows_vista_hotfixes.html

[slaWter]

[pErMan']Seems to be only happening in FSX for me.... WTF. Never had this error before I formatted and went to 64-bit.... maybe its the drivers? 169.25 is what I am currently using. Can play Crysis and COD4 without end... but after about 30 minutes of FSX I get this gay ass error :mad:

Same here. FSX is the only game affected.

[LORD-eX-Bu]

Have you appled all the hotfixes list on nvidia's site?
http://www.nvidia.com/object/windows_vista_hotfixes.html

do you have dreamscene installed or even downloaded? Have you run driver cleaner pro?

I would get those problems just by having Dreamscene downloaded from the Vista Ultimates Extras... seems like drivercleaner caused some problems for me as well.

[$n][pErMan]

Have you appled all the hotfixes list on nvidia's site?
http://www.nvidia.com/object/windows_vista_hotfixes.html
I only have the virtual address one installed... I don't need the SLi ones, but I will give the last 2 listed a try and see what happens. I find it odd only 1 game would be affected, and a game that is really not all to graphically intensive. Never had the issue on 32-bit Vista, but maybe with 64-bit vista I need those hotfixes. I'll keep you all posted. Worth noting is this install of Vista is only 2 weeks old... 169.25 is the ONLY driver set I have installed thus far so I dont think any remaining drivers are causing the issue...

[$n][pErMan]

*addition*... Ok, just tried the updates and apperently I already have them isntalled or my files are fine. Says the update does not apply for my system (and yes I downloaded the x64 version). So it looks like I am back to not knowing what the hell is wrong with nvidia + microsoft + FSX :(

[slaWter]

I also have all the updates installed and tried different drivers, still get this crash. With older drivers the system blue screened, so this is at least an improvement :o

It worked earlier with 2GB RAM if I remember correctly. $n][pErMan, have you tried it once with 2GB instead of 4GB?