Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding - GTX260

[Ghosthunter]

Ok i got this message tonight for the first time while playing Age of Conan twice

It happened really fast, when it happened it look like my screen was going to crash, everything froze and for a quick second i saw a tons of red dots all across the screen and then the screen went to normal.

I was like WTF.


I went to my desktop and temps seemed to be normal according to rivatuner hardware log

So I looked in event log and I saw this message twice right in a row but in between there was in a windows defender message that it found some problem with cpu-z. No idea if that was the cause

Is this a sign of a card going bad? I am using 177.41 drivers for Vista 64. Have not had any problems since I put the system together about 3 weeks ago and been playing AoC since


For now i totally disabled windows defender, i do not need that i have Nod32 anyway

Thanks


here are the exact messages in the event viewer

Event ID 4101

Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered.

[Lfctony]

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=86550

You can't troubleshoot specifically, just mess around and hope it's fixed...

[Ghosthunter]

great..so i guess it is not a bad card then..some weird driver vista issue

[Badboy_12345]

for me it has been heat related on my 8800gtx

The card and the standard cooler cant take the heat.

It was the same last summer

The only other thing you can do is buy an aftermarket cooler or downclock the card during the summer.

[Lfctony]

Sometimes it can be caused by the drivers as well. The worst thing about these errors is exactly that. The error is always the same, but the cause is always different. Others have had it from faulty cards, other from bad ram, others from system incompatibilities of a sort, others from unstable Nvidia drivers. The only way to make sure your system is not at fault is run a Windows XP installation side by side with Vista. If your system is rock solid in XP, then it's very likely that this error is because of drivers or a weird conflict.

For example, I have a WinXP x64 installation with my current system that is, until now, error free. My Vista installation is also, error-free. Yesterday, I installed the 177.73, which caused this error within a minute in Crysis. Rolled back to the 177.41s and ran the timedemo for 90 minutes without error...

Conclusion: The 177.73 are an unstable set of drivers for my system. For you, they might work perfectly...


Tony.

[nekrosoft13]

there are many factors that can cause this error.

temps
card
driver
game
software config
os issue
other hardware issues (memory, board)

sometimes can be quite hard to troubleshoot. lucky i only had this issue in early 07 with first set of 8800gtx drivers.

[Ghosthunter]

thanks for suggestions i ran memtest overnight and no erros showed up so that is a good sign that it is not memory

i am thinking it is Age of Conan i bet that game is buggy as hell

[nekrosoft13]

Age of Conan is buggy, very buggy. Does it happen in any other game?

[Ghosthunter]

i have not played any other game i been so addicted to AOC


I guess I should try maybe I will play Crysis or COD 4

that would be a really good test to at least know if it driver related or the card

[nekrosoft13]

for temp or card, load up furmark and let it run for about 2-3 minutes.

keep rivatuner or evga precision tool in the background to minitor the temps.

[Ghosthunter]

well i played about an hour of COD 4 no problems but will try that furmark

[Ghosthunter]

ok i ran furmark for 5 minutes it never went past 86C according to rivatuner and it never crashed

So i think the card is ok right?

so far I played Age of Conan all night last night and it only crashed once when i went to alt tab to check one thing, and boom it BSOD, i guess it does not like to go into window mode


other then that it seems to be running ok

I played COD4 again and it never crashed, so it must be just AoC


Thanks for all your help