Nvlddmkm stopped responding is getting VERY OLD...

[$n][pErMan]

It's an old thread. But, when I said in my post that it's Nvidia's fault, I really meant "You did this blah blah, yet it's Nvidia's fault", which translates to "not Nvidia's fault". Anyways, I believe that the crash no longer happens due to the drivers in 95% of cases. It's most likely the result of too much overclocking, a generally unstable system due to hardware conflicts or just bad hardware... For example, mine was fixed when I backed down from my overclocking. Also, on my other motherboard, overclocking with one video card was fine, with two it crashed with this error in a couple of minutes. Again, bad hardware/overclocking... For me...

Tony.
I have not had this error for awhile now... I think its a combination of drivers and OC'ing as you said. Why my system was 100% stable on 32-bit Vista and not on 64-bit Vista... beats me... I still blame the drivers. But after taking my OC down a little on my video card and changing drivers things seem to be working fine again. *crosses fingers*

[Roliath]

This is crap, I just did a fresh install of Windows and now i'm getting this error constantly....

jesus man..this **** is ridiculous

[Single Player]

what! i didn't know about this error ever, untill now.. what is wrong with it// never had this error before// i start getting it since 177 released.. damn it

[Sven2157]

Hey Folks....

I FOUND AND FIXED THE PROBLEM! NO REALLY! I DID!!!!

IT IS NOT nVIDIA or ATI, NOT THE VIDEO CARD/DRIVER, NOR IS IT WINDOWS XP/VISTA!!!

READY!?<drumroll>...............

IT'S nTUNE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (And I am sure that ATI has a counterpart to nTune!)

There was a reason for computer manufacturers to not include a way to change the settings of your system speeds, unless

you knew what you were doing; thus having to go in and MANUALLY Change them your self.

Now with the advent of nTune, you can go in to a program and DYNAMICALLY change your system speeds. This is good in

theory and all, but the problem starts when Windows loads.

nTune doesn't startup until the operating system is loaded. Once the OS is loaded, nTune then scans its "custom rules"

and proceeds to load the "profile" that the user has set. This profile then dynamically changes system speeds and

clocks. (<-- this is where all our trouble begins!)

If you DO NOT Over Clock your computer uninstall or disable your nTune program/service.

If you want to Over Clock your system, run nTune write down the Best Settings, uninstall or disable nTune, and then go

into your BIOS and Manally enter the system speeds and clocks.

If you are not sure how to do that, then you have NO BUSINESS OC'ing your system in the first place! ;-)

BOTTOM LINE: This problem is caused by nTune!

Good Luck!

Sven2157

[tisdale36]

I used one of my GTXs and I swapped it out and changed no settings, drivers or software and it works great. If anyone is having this problem they should talk to their buddy who has the same card or newer and see if they will let them swap for 1 day and see what happens. My buddy at work was willing to do it so I know it can be done. I would do it for my buddy. IT IS YOUR CARD, NOT THE DRIVER.

[Reliquary]

Hey Folks....

I FOUND AND FIXED THE PROBLEM! NO REALLY! I DID!!!!

IT IS NOT nVIDIA or ATI, NOT THE VIDEO CARD/DRIVER, NOR IS IT WINDOWS XP/VISTA!!!

READY!?<drumroll>...............

IT'S nTUNE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (And I am sure that ATI has a counterpart to nTune!)

There was a reason for computer manufacturers to not include a way to change the settings of your system speeds, unless

you knew what you were doing; thus having to go in and MANUALLY Change them your self.

Now with the advent of nTune, you can go in to a program and DYNAMICALLY change your system speeds. This is good in

theory and all, but the problem starts when Windows loads.

nTune doesn't startup until the operating system is loaded. Once the OS is loaded, nTune then scans its "custom rules"

and proceeds to load the "profile" that the user has set. This profile then dynamically changes system speeds and

clocks. (<-- this is where all our trouble begins!)

If you DO NOT Over Clock your computer uninstall or disable your nTune program/service.

If you want to Over Clock your system, run nTune write down the Best Settings, uninstall or disable nTune, and then go

into your BIOS and Manally enter the system speeds and clocks.

If you are not sure how to do that, then you have NO BUSINESS OC'ing your system in the first place! ;-)

BOTTOM LINE: This problem is caused by nTune!

Good Luck!

Sven2157

Nope. While this was still happening I didn't overclock, and never once used nTune to control system settings. They were all left bog standard.

And nope to your post either. tisdale 36. The same 8800gtx that's chugging along happily now was in my machine when it was going down with monotonous regularity - sometimes several times an hour. What happened with me was that I uninstalled Vista because I was sick of the problem, but reinstalled it after the fixes were issued by Microsoft. I haven't had any problems since.

[keLston]

Hey Folks....

I FOUND AND FIXED THE PROBLEM! NO REALLY! I DID!!!!

IT IS NOT nVIDIA or ATI, NOT THE VIDEO CARD/DRIVER, NOR IS IT WINDOWS XP/VISTA!!!

READY!?<drumroll>...............

IT'S nTUNE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (And I am sure that ATI has a counterpart to nTune!)

There was a reason for computer manufacturers to not include a way to change the settings of your system speeds, unless

you knew what you were doing; thus having to go in and MANUALLY Change them your self.

Now with the advent of nTune, you can go in to a program and DYNAMICALLY change your system speeds. This is good in

theory and all, but the problem starts when Windows loads.

nTune doesn't startup until the operating system is loaded. Once the OS is loaded, nTune then scans its "custom rules"

and proceeds to load the "profile" that the user has set. This profile then dynamically changes system speeds and

clocks. (<-- this is where all our trouble begins!)

If you DO NOT Over Clock your computer uninstall or disable your nTune program/service.

If you want to Over Clock your system, run nTune write down the Best Settings, uninstall or disable nTune, and then go

into your BIOS and Manally enter the system speeds and clocks.

If you are not sure how to do that, then you have NO BUSINESS OC'ing your system in the first place! ;-)

BOTTOM LINE: This problem is caused by nTune!

Good Luck!

Sven2157

Nope, I have this issue, I don't have nTune, never have. I've never overclocked.

[noko]

I have an EVGA, got it Novemeber 2006, black circuit board. I did see this when I first got the card but when I changed out my motherboard/cpu/powersupply it dramatically reduced. Now I can't remember when I've seen this. I don't overclock the video card but the Q6600 is running at 3.2ghz. Vista 64.

That doesn't mean I don't have driver issues but card is acceptable and been very impressive from the get go otherwise.

[Vegas Moon]

Hi guys. I have been trauling the net looking for an answer to a problem i have found with my new comp. Seems like it isnt a new or individual problem and that worries me a lot!

I have tried to read back over whats has been said and i have to say a lot of it went over my head, so please bear with me while i bore you with my story. I did a lot of research but not enough as i didnt understand what hSLI and SLI were different :o and had no idea this problem existed with Vista. It arrived last week and after installing OS and updating the drivers i was initially impressed and happy with the set up lasting me a couple of years at least.
Initially i was running on the 9800 alone and tried a couple of games which ran brilliantly and very stable. CoD4 sill works with no problems at all. City of Heroes on the other hand kept producing this error between 15 and 60 minutes of game time.
I thought that installling the hSLI drivers would fix the problem but no. It made it worse! Boost mode with high or low settings in the game make no difference nor does save mode on lesser settings. I did manage 4 hours of uninterrupted at one point.
All the hardware is aparently running cool and working.
Whislt checking the net for answers i noticed a gfx driver update in windows update so i thought that might be the answer. Unofrtunately it has seemingly removed the hSLI functionality and my system will now only run using the 8200 chipset. I checked the bios that i changed in order to install hSLI and they have changed to the lesser settings. The system tells me the 9800 is ok. I guess il have to uninstall the gfx drivers and start again :thumbdwn:
Right now the error only happens when i am runing CoH and only other problem i have had is searching for XP machines on my network. Any advice would be very much appreciated.:afro2:

CPU AMD Phenom 9550Q 2.2ghz
MB ASRock K10n78-hSLI with GeForce 8200 chipset
RAM 4GB DDR2 2x2@800mhz
GFX Xpertvision GeForce 9800GTX+/512mb DDR3/256bit
HD Hitachi HDP725050GLA360 500gb
OD Sony Optiarc AD-5200a disc drive
PSU EZcool EZ550w PSU
OS Vista Home Premium 32/sp1

nVidiaDriver 178.13

[Vigi]

I started getting this with the 180.43 beta drivers on a brand new install of windows. It happens whether or not I have both cards installed or just one. Rolling back to 178.24 fixed the crashes though.

[Roliath]

Running SLI, tried Tri-SLI but I can't get my system stable enough to run anything.
I'm getting sick of this horrible bug, all cards run fine when alone but once in Tri-SLI using numerous driver sets (cleaned out with Driver Cleaner Pro) dx10 is unplayable and results in CTD's or BlueScreens (hell the driver doesn't even recover half the time).
I'm running a Thermaltake Toughpower 1200w with three cards.

Same goes with when running two cards in SLI.

I can't even play games in DX10, and when Running crysis or Warhead in dx9/10 the game flat out crashes.

Fallout 3 crashes soon after playing.

And FarCry 2 is up in the air.

What the **** to say the least.

DX is updated, fresh install + SP1. 64bit.

[EnergyRecruit]

Whats up nVidia? It's been almost 7 months now, you have released 2 new versions of the driver and the bug is still there. I know linux probably isn't a high priority and i understand that. But this is a joke. I used to recommend linux-interrested people to get a nvidia card, but these days i'm starting to wonder if thats really a good advice at all.
Anyway, i really hope someone has an idea on how to fix this, any help will be greatly appriciated.
I'm running (K)Ubuntu 8.04 amd64. I usually just use the drivers from the repos unless something is wrong. In this case, the fan is wrong. I didn't have this problem in (X)Ubuntu 7.10, so I found the driver version from that release and installed it and the fan is OK again. I could change the fan speed with nvclock, but it's obviously much better for it to change itself. It seems like it's not changing

[Greg]

I've just started getting this again after 1 year of smooth running. I recently installed the 180.43 and 180.48 drivers. I might go back older and see if that helps. Temperatures are not going over ~70degC so its not a fan failure. I can repro the problem by firing up Crysis or Fallout 3. MSI 8800GT, Vista 32, Intel Q6600 here.

Edit: Happened again with good old 178.24, so perhaps my card is failing.
Edit2: Tried the card on another PC and it hasn't failed in hours of testing. Very confusing.

[Burpy]

I have been getting this error for awhile now and usually I can just close the game and I'm back on Vista desktop with no issue.
Well, just about an hour ago I got the error while playing Quake Wars and did the usual close program, but this time the display driver
crashed Vista and gave me my first BSOD ever since using Vista.

Now for some reason I can't get back into the desktop without Nvlddmkm constantly recovering, followed by Vista crashing.

This happened on the new 180.48 drivers. I went into safe mode, uninstalled, used driver cleaner and installed 178.24.
Now the 178 drivers keeps recovering until vista crashes. :(

I'm currently running vista without drivers.

What do you think can be the problem?

[Lfctony]

I've just started getting this again after 1 year of smooth running. I recently installed the 180.43 and 180.48 drivers. I might go back older and see if that helps. Temperatures are not going over ~70degC so its not a fan failure. I can repro the problem by firing up Crysis or Fallout 3. MSI 8800GT, Vista 32, Intel Q6600 here.

Edit: Happened again with good old 178.24, so perhaps my card is failing.
Edit2: Tried the card on another PC and it hasn't failed in hours of testing. Very confusing.

It might not be the card itself, it might be a combination of your hardware... It's strange though that you did not have it for a while but started getting it out of the blue... :thumbdwn:

[Greg]

It might not be the card itself, it might be a combination of your hardware... It's strange though that you did not have it for a while but started getting it out of the blue... :thumbdwn:
Well when I first got the card, the fan would not speed up, so the card would hit 90deg and then crash with that error. So I updated the VGA BIOS and the fan kicks in as the temperature rises and it never gets over ~70deg now. The latest issue is not heat related and the card has performed flawlessly for just over one year.

The crash seemed to start after installing a new video driver but reverting to older version did not fix. Now running in a dual core AMD system instead of the quad core Intel system, I cannot get the card to crash at all. I was using Fallout 3 and Crysis to reproduce the issue since I can just load a save game and wait a few minutes. Since the crash does not occur on the second machine, the cause is unknown. I've swapped video cards between the two systems and both have been stable for days now.

No hardware has changed. The only software changed around the time was the nVidia driver and perhaps the Realtek HD audio driver.

Edit: I ran the error producing card in another machine for a couple of weeks. It performed flawlessly. The card I exchanged with also performed flawlessly in the error producing machine. Today I swapped back and once again this error occurs. I have no idea what is special about this machine setup or why the two got along happily for a year.

[kankurou]

Hi. I'm trying to collect all of the data about this stupid nvlddmkm error and put it all into one place so people won't be spending that much time scouring all over Google for the solutions. This website is at http://www.nvlddmkm.com please let me know if there should be anything that I should add to the website. Thanks!
-Nick

BTW I still have yet to fix this error for my computer as well.

[ikjadoon]

Nifty, man! Great idea. :D

~Ibrahim~

P.S. I'm lucky enough not to have this issue, so I don't really know what to add.

[trivium nate]

I havent had this happen in a while

[hypertek]

i hope there is a 100percent solution to this..
i had this problem a few months ago if i had let vista 64 auto update and it wouldnt boot *BSOD*, so i would have to use the vista install disc and do a system restore to prior update and turn updates off... never figured it out.

Then today was playing some games and thought it would be a good idea to update drivers.. after updating.. BSOD on booting.. so i had to turn to booting the vista disc to system restore, trying different drivers and no go same thing..

5-6 hours later i realize this and download some older drivers 178 series and now im back up...

So any newer drivers than 178 and i cant even boot.. this problem sucks!! Ill just have to sit on these drivers for a while.. having no job at the momment sucks too, so changing hardware is not an option for me right now.

Specs in my sig are old btw.. lol
different mobo DFI bloodiron, e6700, 4gb ram

[hypertek]

well guys, this is wierd, i did windows update, and tried to update to sp2, and upon reboot i was getting BSOD, so no way to boot, and windows wiped out all my restore points except 1 prior to sp2 install.. so i went back to that, and still got BSOD upon reboot because of that nv file...

check this out tho, if i press f8 during boot and choose "allow drivers with improper signature to load"... i can boot fine, no BSOD... so maybe its some sort of windows signature problem/conflict... maybe theres a registry hack to disable signature confirmation.. but i dont know if that would be risky...

[brianimal]

For the love of GOD!! Will this error EVER be fixed by these weasels at Microsoft???????

Is there no official word from Microsoft on this BS error?? It's crashing all my games. Damn Vista.

[SkyFire]

Well I've had a 8500GT card for over a year now, ran smoothly for 8 months when it began to crash while playing the game Guild Wars (everything would turn wireframe and I would get a strange yellow film over everything, even if I closed the game before BSOD.) While it would crash while playing Guild Wars, higher performance games such as Crysis would run smoothly.

At first it was just occurring once or twice every month and I thought nothing of it, I updated my driver on October 27th '08 (I cannot recall the driver version.) This seemed to help with making my crashes less common, and I thought by December they had gone away completely.

I received a new stick of ram for Christmas, installed and ran fine (this was the only change I've made to my computer since getting the new video card in December '07.) Yesterday, Jan 10th '09 (the ram was installed on December 26th '08 and no crashes until now) I was plagued by crashing while running Guild Wars for only 15 minutes, window mode, full screen, low graphics, high graphics, it made no difference. The same yellowish film would appear on other applications such as iTunes, if I even managed to close the game before BSOD.

Now I can't run the game for more than 15 minutes without crashing and I've tried almost every fix for this that I've found. I've updated drivers, did everything suggested at www.nvlddmkm.com, applied a portable fan, and still the problem persists. The thing that confuses me the most is why this problem is periodic, or was, prior to the constant crashes.

I'm on 32-bit Vista, btw.

[michaelbacayo]

I had a generic 8800GT card in a P45 motherboard and was having this error constantly when doing graphics-intensive applications from games to some light CAD work. I applied a lot of fixes, from disabling aero to enabling 3GB vmem, which did not work. What made the error go away was downgrading the bios to a gen1 from ASUS. Albeit, i had to watch for the fan speed of that bios, because the operating temperature had defaulted to 90C according to RivaTuner --- I am now happy with that stable configuration. Hope that helps.

[Vigi]

I stopped getting these errors on my 790i when I upgraded to the P08 bios, and come to think about it, they didn't start till around the time I put the P07 bios on. But what was weird is it only affected the newer drivers post 178.24.

Oh well, long as it stopped.