nvlddmkm stopped responding in Windows Vista, Vista Driver Problem Options

[S22]

S22, could you take a look at my original post, it include some stats you can add to your post a bout solution ideas
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well i first will check if i got you in the right way:

. disabled SLI (if used before): solved the problem partially

158.45 - solved the problem partially
162.22 - didn help
163.11 - didn help

[ChrisRay]

*snip*
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Hawkeye, Nvidia actually has reproduced the issue with regards to SLI and this issue. And they do have their software team working on it. Over at slizone forums. I setup a thread for SLI users who were experiencing this issue to post their memory dump files so Nvidia could have a look at them. While I am confident a future driver release will do much to help the problem which has resurfaced for SLI users. I cant make any gaurentees that it will fix it for all users as there are many types of problems which could cause this issue to occur. ((And no its not always the same as I have observed many memory dump files myself)),

I cant answer all your questions. As I dont have all the answers, Regardless. People just need to be civil to people here. I understand users and people are upset by this. I've had it happen once or twice on my SLI setup since installing the 16x.xx drivers. And it certainly can be annoying. But spamming/fighting/arguing/flaming isnt going to solve the issue either. And it's only going to make it harder for those looking for information to find it. I had no problem with Otto's post contents other than his blatant disrespect towards users. And if I find others treating people in a similar fashion. I will be on them about it too. If you see a huge flame war break out. Report it to moderation and me and Brian will handle it if we see it as needing to be handled.

Chris

[hawkeye52]

well i first will check if i got you in the right way:

. disabled SLI (if used before): solved the problem partially

158.45 - solved the problem partially
162.22 - didn help
163.11 - didn help
[right][snapback]237353[/snapback][/right]

summarized very well

[Richhy]

That is strange, I frequently switch between XP and Vista and have no problems playing my games on XP, however I have 2x 8800's.  Did this problem occur on XP immediatly after switching to XP from Vista??
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Yes, Warcraft ran flawlessly with 50+ FPS a year ago before vista was even available. After Installing vista that problem began, started light at first and grew as the months went by. I went back to XP specifically to fix the warcraft issue, and even though I didn't experience the Display Driver error in XP desktop, Warcraft had the same problems with strange artifacts and low FPS in XP as it did in Vista.

I reinstalled Vista this morning because XP didn't fix the issue. Took about 4 tries to install because my drivers kept crashing during instillation this time around. Never happened the first time I installed Vista.

[hawkeye52]

Hawkeye, Nvidia actually has reproduced the issue with regards to SLI and this issue. And they do have their software team working on it. Over at slizone forums. I setup a forum for SLI users who were experiencing this issue to post their memory dump files so Nvidia could have a look at them.

While I am confident a future driver release will do much to help the problem which has resurfaced for SLI users. I cant make any gaurentees that it will fix it for all users as there are many types of problems which could cause this issue to occur. ((And no its not always the same as I have observed many memory dump files myself)),

I cant answer all your questions. As I dont have all the answers, Regardless. People just need to be civil to people here. I understand users and people are upset by this. I've had it happen once or twice on my SLI setup since installing the 16x.xx drivers. And it certainly can be annoying. But spamming/fighting/arguing/flaming isnt going to solve the issue either. And it's only going to make it harder for those looking for information to find it.

I had no problem with Otto's post contents other than his blatant disrespect towards users. And if I find others treating people in a similar fashion. I will be on them about it too. As well if you see a huge flame war break out. Report it to moderation and me and Brian will handle it if we see it as needing to be handled.

Chris
[right][snapback]237354[/snapback][/right]

I appreciate, the informative reply. As most of the problem (not all unfortunately) were caused during SLI enabled mode, I will head right over to the SLI forum tonight and try to contribute to the dump files, as I'd like to help, if only to get this issue resolved quicker.

For the past couple of weeks I've felt left in the dark about this, but thank you for clearing some concerns up for me and as always I'll check everyday for new WHQL or Beta drivers in hopes it will make me a happy gamer

[hawkeye52]

Yes, Warcraft ran flawlessly with 50+ FPS a year ago before vista was even available. After Installing vista that problem began, started light at first and grew as the months went by. I went back to XP specifically to fix the warcraft issue, and even though I didn't experience the Display Driver error in XP desktop, Warcraft had the same problems with strange artifacts and low FPS in XP as it did in Vista.

I reinstalled Vista this morning because XP didn't fix the issue. Took about 4 tries to install because my drivers kept crashing during instillation this time around. Never happened the first time I installed Vista.
[right][snapback]237358[/snapback][/right]

Your problem does sound more hardware based and if I were you I'd look into that warranty for hardware failure. whatever it is, it is more serious than this simple vista problem everyone is having.

[Richhy]

Your problem does sound more hardware based and if I were you I'd look into that warranty for hardware failure.  whatever it is, it is more serious than this simple vista problem everyone is having.
[right][snapback]237363[/snapback][/right]

Thanks for your feedback, I guess I'll need to look into my warranty. I just hope its not too late, it irks me that I have to replace such a expensive card =/

[hawkeye52]

Thanks for your feedback, I guess I'll need to look into my warranty. I just hope its not too late, it irks me that I have to replace such a expensive card =/
[right][snapback]237368[/snapback][/right]

most companies have lifetime warranties on hardware failures/defects, some even have double lifetime warranties (if you sell your vid card, even the person purchasing it from you is under the warranty)

I don't think it would be too much of a problem to get it replaced

BTW, I read this on the SLI forums, this may help... not sure but I am going to give it a shot tonight and will post results...

"i had the same problem when vista aero is enabled and driver keeps crashing. im not sure if this will help u guys but i seem to have solved it for me on my evga 680i motherboard.
in the bios voltage section i had nforce MCP voltage and HT nforce SPP<->MCP voltatge to auto
i changed that and set them to 1.5v for MCP and 1.2 for SPP<->MCP and it seemed to stop the driver crashes.
not sure if it will work for everyone else but it did the job for me. now i can have sli enabled and vista aero as well.
i have 2 8800gtx's btw."

This post has been edited by hawkeye52: Aug 15 2007, 07:53 PM

[Legion]

I have sent this to Dwight Diercks - VP of Software Engineering - I am sure he will ignore it but hey I tried.

Dwight,

Please forgive me for emailing you direct but quite frankly something has to be done about this issue - there far too many people with this problem outstanding and for far too long. With no official word from your company, your customers are being left to fend for themselves, a situation which is both unfair and poor form in terms of customer service.

I am unaware as to whether this problem lies with Nvidia or it is a Microsoft but clearly the blame lies some where between the two. Therefore I would ask you to please confirm that you are aware of the problem and that you are attempting to fix it rather than continuing to ignore the pleas on your own forums. I have attached a link below to one post about this issues that has had 2000+ posts and over 230,000 views!

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=25381

I am eager to here your view of the matter and eagerly await a resolution.

Thank you for your time in advance.

This post has been edited by Legion: Aug 15 2007, 09:02 PM

[ksporry]

well, I am NOT overclocking anything, and strangely it SUDDENLY happens.
I am not a hardware guru so half the fixes you discuss I don't understand at all. I don't even know how I can find out what hardware I have using Vista!

Since my previous PC with XP didn't give any problems, I don't see why my current one should do so now.

Also, I assume that hardware has certain production tests that are performed before it is shipped out. As a result, I expect hardware to perform according to spec. Therefore, I expect that a NORMAL Operating System, would exert that hardware no further than to teh specifications of that hardware. Likewise I expect that hardware to protect itself against being exerted by software that tries to utilise that hardware in a normal fashion (non-overclocking).
If teh operating system has to exert hardware more than it's intended use to be able to run normaly, teh operating system is no longer considered as normal.

If my hardware breaks because I run Vista, then I definitely consider it a software issue, and then it is definitely a Vista problem, not a hardware problem, maybe not even a driver problem!

ALthough I do not have a list that states Vista compatibility, according to teh garphics card list of cards compatible with Vista, my card is referenced on there so should be compatible.
Memory I don't know. My motherboard is Vista compliant it said.

Actually, although I can understand that hardware needs to be compatible with an operating system, I do expect some degree of flexibility with an OS like windows.

As a side note: it's rather interesting that whenever Microsoft comes out with a new OS, most software needs to be updated for continued compatibility, and most drivers need to be updated as well. It's interesting that this is not teh case for Mac. All older software (to a certain degree ofcourse) is "forwarrd compatible" (though not always backwards compatible) with newer OS'. WIth windows it is neither forward nor backward compatible.
Next time I get an OS from Microsoft (if I ever will), I will expect an 8 week course, all expenses paid, to make proficient in that OS so I can run my PC normally liek a normal person...

as a second side note: I don't even get around to playing games anymore. I did 2 games: FSX and Battlefield 1942. Now I can't play either, because most of the time my pc can't even start up normally due to the graphics problem.

This post has been edited by ksporry: Aug 15 2007, 09:09 PM

[rialcnis]

It is amazing this thread has gone on so long without massive flame wars. Finally someone cracks and gets banned, attcking other users, despite other's efforts to keep it light and conversational.

What Otto may not realize, is that with quite a few people, the nvlddmkm error began at the same time as overheating issues began.

I know for me I was running along smoothly for a month and a half, or so so with excellent (fantastic) performance in games.

Then suddenly I started seeing the nvlddmkm error from time to time, along with huge spikes in temperature of the CPU and the GPUS. I wasn't having the overheating, until the nvlddmkm error began.

As days passed the nvlddmkm error increased in frequency and so did heat spikes, but at the same time, sometime I would get the driver error when the machine was cold, making me sceptical that overheating alone was causing it. Afterall I hadn't seen any overheating until the nvlddmkm started. So I am very sceptical of either view that it is JUST hardware or JUST software. It's both.

As more days passed the frequency of the error was making the machine unusable in games and even browsing. Temperature changes were erratic and intermittent. During this increase in frequency of the error and the overheating, changing drivers or trying other things like disabling SLI or Aero, or turning off the factory overclocking or blowing a powerful room fan into the box, would seem to lessen the frequency of errors for a few hours or even as long as 2 weeks in the case of one driver change. But the error would return with a vengence and even when the temps were cooler, the frequency of the error was still increasing to the point of the error looping endlessly, even with a cold system and then a much quicker run up in the temperatures.

At first it was easy to blame Vista, but then I saw that people with XP were having the same problem, it was easy to blame Nvidia but then I see that ATI is having the same problem.

I have to conclude that all the companies involved have a lot of work to do and alot of customer care is needed.

I think Otto didn't realize, that alot of people here, myself included, like to know what is behind an issue and to try to pinpoint what causes it rather then just passively wait for a cure. Some of us have to go through the system manufactures and others that built their boxes wanted to try added cooling and some of them have claimed the problem went away with hardware changes. It is all in the spirit of trying to find where the problem is coming from, hoping to uncover a solution or narrow down the field, so that proper steps can be taken to describe the problems when doing RMA's. We are well aware that people have RMA'ed cards or ram and some have seen the problem return right away and others feel the RMA fixed the problem. Time will tell.

I disagree that the problem is fundamentally "different" for different people even though is manifests itself differently case by case.

When I get my box back from Alienware I will shudder if I get a month of good performance only to see the error return.

I don't think it is just "defective" parts, where X amount of cards or RAM is just bad. I am afraid it is more fundamental then that and we are talking about inherent design flaws, that just new drivers can't fix. My solution then would be a refund and/or newer fixed hardware along with warrany extension.

I have to be positive and assume that all the companies involved are working hard to fix it all and fully intend to make it up to their customers. It is their reputation on the line.

[rikkuotaku1]

Rikku. These are "User to User" forums. Provided by Nvidia for users to discuss and help each other with Nvidia hardware. They are "Not" an official channel for customer support.

Just a  because "Moderator" showed up and enforced the rules. Does not mean free season to break the rules. [right][snapback]237333[/snapback][/right]

I completely understand your difficult position and appreciate the amount of time it must take to keep these crazy forums in check.

If this forum is not an official channel to support and no Nvidia employees visit these forums, what would be the best channel to official support? I have tried practically all available to me including email, bug submisison form, etc. I have no resolution.

I am a SysAdmin and have almost unlimited resources to build systems on my own time to research this problem. I've found it happens consistantly with similar hardware and OS/Driver configs ruling out 'bad hardware' as a possibility. Using Windows XP always solves the issue in my case. These observations lead me to believe that the Vista requires an unnecessary level of stability to satisfy DRM (AACS) requirements and that Nvidia is either (or both) unable to manufacture sufficiently stable hardware or drivers that meet those stringent requirements. Heat, Overclocking, etc. would introduce an extra amount of 'error' (as your microwave would cause your 802.11b/g signal to deteriorate) that Vista will not tolarate. If you've read the Vista DRM specs, you'll notice that an extra amount of errors is to be treated as a hardware 'attack' and the video/audio subsystem is to be reset - perhaps a 'TDR error' results.

This is all theory on my part, I confess, but after reading Peter Gutmann's article (PLEASE read it, some of it is nonsense, but the tilt bit/driver part is genius) everything literally falls into place - especially when you consider how complex the problem is likely to be, how long it has gone unfixed, and how difficult it must be to write drivers that can account for every odd microwave/gamma-ray that 'tilts' a certain bit out of whack.

My frustration is that after MONTHS of having hardware that is LABELED Vista compatible, I am unable to get it working with Vista. This is compounded by the fact that Nvidia is unwilling to own up to the problem (they MUST have SOME idea about what specifically is causing this by now) and say that it is their fault. This is typical for large companies - consider how Microsoft, after saying that XBOX360 problems were miniscule and in line with industry failure rates of 1-2% are now pledging 1.2 billion dollars to replace an estimated 30-40% of consoles which have failed. I hate being lied to by companies, as does Otto and others on this forum. Our only recourse is to voice our frustration to anyone who will listen. I apologize that you've bore the brunt of this, but Nvidia has so far treated its customers like crap with regards to this problem and have cheated us out of our money by selling products that are falsely advertised and labled. After the problem has gone on for so long, it is safe to say that they know of the widespread issue and with heads in the sand, continue to sell Vista compatible products knowing full well that there is an appreciable failure rate. This is unacceptable.

To have others on this forums jump on the bandwagon that the majority of these problems are 'bad hardware', 'heat', 'overclocking' issues is as insulting as being called a stupid jerk. It is a lie and while perhaps lying is not against the forum rules, purposefully misleading users with misinformation about their problems, should be. Let's all work together to bring Nvidia to task about this critical problem and not follow wild-goose chases that skirt the real issue.

[mjhvoip]

Hello everyone,

I built the following system on 7/17/07:

WD Caviar 500GB Serial ATA HD 7200/16MB/SATA-3G
EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS (Video Card)
XFX nForce 680i SLI (Board)
OCZ 2028 PC8500 DDR 1066Mhz Nvidia SLI 2x1024 (RAM)
Window Vista Ultimate 64-bit
Intel Quad Core Kentsfiled 2.4Ghz Q6600 (CPU)
Ultra 600w X-Finity Power Supply

Right off the bat I did some pretty rigorous gaming on the system without any issues or concerns. Before this week I have not had any problems.

On Monday 8/13/07 I encountered my first "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered." Since then I have had 131 Events of the same recurrence in the Event Log. I did not install or do anything out of the norm.

-
Cooling: No heat changes occurred out of the normal, I have a dedicated extra fan card over the video card.
-
Registry Change: I have not tried any to date.
-
Link/Synced Ram: This is one area I have a few questions on, during my first boot on 7/17 it displayed my memory clock at 800Mhz, this confused me. I have not overclocked anything except in the BIOS there is an option for SLI-READY Memory I turned this to CPUOC 2% this then changed the RAM Memory clock to 1066 unlinked. After reading a few different forums and getting more desperate for a solution I decided to tweak the ram settings, first I took out one stick and changed the slot of the main chip. Surprisingly this stopped all occurrences of the problem. I let a few graphic intensive games run awhile to really give it a go. After hours of no recurrences of the problem I decided to put the other stick back in, linked 800MHz. I am still not having any problems, I will test this through the eve and tomorrow. If all goes smoothly I will up the FSB sync to 1066 and do some testing, maybe this information will help someone.
-
Aero/Classic View: When I switched to classic the problem did not change in any way.
-
Hardware Exchange: Last resort.
-
Turn off UAC: I have the tweak utility, but some further reading of this option comes highly not recommend.
-
Drivers: I did a roll back as well as testing the latest drivers, 162.22_forceware_winvista_64bit_english_whql. This made the errors much more frequent. I also tried removing the old drivers.

Mike

[rialcnis]

well, I am NOT overclocking anything, and strangely it SUDDENLY happens.
I am not a hardware guru so half the fixes you discuss I don't understand at all. I don't As a side note: it's rather interesting that whenever Microsoft comes out with a new OS, most software needs to be updated for continued compatibility, and most drivers need to be updated as well. It's interesting that this is not teh case for Mac. All older software (to a certain degree ofcourse) is "forwarrd compatible" (though not always backwards compatible) with newer OS'. WIth windows it is neither forward nor backward compatible.
Next time I get an OS from Microsoft (if I ever will), I will expect an 8 week course, all expenses paid, to make proficient in that OS so I can run my PC normally like a normal person...

Keep in mind that Microsoft has far more products to be compatible with and MAC users are having plenty of their own issues as well--wishing they could get the latest cards and keep up with the performance and advancements to PC hardware.

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:XchMN1...clnk&cd=1&gl=us

[Dostoyevsky77]

(SNIP!)
To have others on this forums jump on the bandwagon that the majority of these problems are 'bad hardware', 'heat', 'overclocking' issues is as insulting as being called a stupid jerk. It is a lie and while perhaps lying is not against the forum rules, purposefully misleading users with misinformation about their problems, should be. Let's all work together to bring Nvidia to task about this critical problem and not follow wild-goose chases that skirt the real issue.
[right][snapback]237409[/snapback][/right]

I admit fault in jumping on a lot of "bandwagons," but it's my way of narrowing down the cause(s). It is not (and never has been) my intention to lie to anyone, but I think some of us are on a journey of following every possible path. A lot of people have declared unilateral solutions only to later contradict themselves; their "solutions" and revisited problems indicate a very fundamental issue that spans beyond Nvidia and MS: ATI users also complain of "display driver X has stopped responding..."

I have to give uberkudos to rialcniS (whose name I just now figured out) for summarizing what I think the purpose of this thread is: by sharing ALL of our experiences (regardless of technical proficiency), we can learn how to narrow-down the underlying cause(s) of TDRs in Vista.

Cheers,

d

[ComputerDood]

I have sent this to Dwight Diercks - VP of Software Engineering - I am sure he will ignore it but hey I tried.

Dwight,

Please forgive me for emailing you direct but quite frankly something has to be done about this issue - there far too many people with this problem outstanding and for far too long. With no official word from your company, your customers are being left to fend for themselves, a situation which is both unfair and poor form in terms of customer service.

I am unaware as to whether this problem lies with Nvidia or it is a Microsoft but clearly the blame lies some where between the two. Therefore I would ask you to please confirm that you are aware of the problem and that you are attempting to fix it rather than continuing to ignore the pleas on your own forums. I have attached a link below to one post about this issues that has had 2000+ posts and over 230,000 views!

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=25381

I am eager to here your view of the matter and eagerly await a resolution.

Thank you for your time in advance.
[right][snapback]237393[/snapback][/right]

Would you mind sharing that email address that you used to do this? We should all send Mr. Diercks an email.

[rwoodburn1]

Way to go Legion!! Someone needs to light a fire under someones butt.Maybe if the link to this post was sent to alot of major news organizations like CNN something would get done.

[ComputerDood]

I completely understand your difficult position and appreciate the amount of time it must take to keep these crazy forums in check.

If this forum is not an official channel to support and no Nvidia employees visit these forums, what would be the best channel to official support? I have tried practically all available to me including email, bug submisison form, etc. I have no resolution.

I am a SysAdmin and have almost unlimited resources to build systems on my own time to research this problem. I've found it happens consistantly with similar hardware and OS/Driver configs ruling out 'bad hardware' as a possibility. Using Windows XP always solves the issue in my case. These observations lead me to believe that the Vista requires an unnecessary level of stability to satisfy DRM (AACS) requirements and that Nvidia is either (or both) unable to manufacture sufficiently stable hardware or drivers that meet those stringent requirements. Heat, Overclocking, etc. would introduce an extra amount of 'error' (as your microwave would cause your 802.11b/g signal to deteriorate) that Vista will not tolarate. If you've read the Vista DRM specs, you'll notice that an extra amount of errors is to be treated as a hardware 'attack' and the video/audio subsystem is to be reset - perhaps a 'TDR error' results.

This is all theory on my part, I confess, but after reading Peter Gutmann's article (PLEASE read it, some of it is nonsense, but the tilt bit/driver part is genius) everything literally falls into place - especially when you consider how complex the problem is likely to be, how long it has gone unfixed, and how difficult it must be to write drivers that can account for every odd microwave/gamma-ray that 'tilts' a certain bit out of whack.

My frustration is that after MONTHS of having hardware that is LABELED Vista compatible, I am unable to get it working with Vista. This is compounded by the fact that Nvidia is unwilling to own up to the problem (they MUST have SOME idea about what specifically is causing this by now) and say that it is their fault. This is typical for large companies - consider how Microsoft, after saying that XBOX360 problems were miniscule and in line with industry failure rates of 1-2% are now pledging 1.2 billion dollars to replace an estimated 30-40% of consoles which have failed. I hate being lied to by companies, as does Otto and others on this forum. Our only recourse is to voice our frustration to anyone who will listen. I apologize that you've bore the brunt of this, but Nvidia has so far treated its customers like crap with regards to this problem and have cheated us out of our money by selling products that are falsely advertised and labled. After the problem has gone on for so long, it is safe to say that they know of the widespread issue and with heads in the sand, continue to sell Vista compatible products knowing full well that there is an appreciable failure rate. This is unacceptable.

To have others on this forums jump on the bandwagon that the majority of these problems are 'bad hardware', 'heat', 'overclocking' issues is as insulting as being called a stupid jerk. It is a lie and while perhaps lying is not against the forum rules, purposefully misleading users with misinformation about their problems, should be. Let's all work together to bring Nvidia to task about this critical problem and not follow wild-goose chases that skirt the real issue.
[right][snapback]237409[/snapback][/right]

I loved it when you said, "To have others on this forums jump on the bandwagon that the majority of these problems are 'bad hardware', 'heat', 'overclocking' issues is as insulting as being called a stupid jerk".

And yet, the one who was mostly called a stupid jerk and then got angry for being called a stupid jerk daily and repeatedly by several different forum users was the one who got banned. That is as about as fair as getting a TDR message in the first place!

The solution is pretty simple, toss your PC, use your PDA, it does everything now anyways.

I seriously liked the DRM article and the link to the MS explanation of TDR, finish your graphics operation in 2 seconds or else get a TDR. Sounds like the graphics card makers are victims of Microsoft as well.

And now the whole DX10.1 issue is comming. They made me buy a video card for DX8, then DX9, then DX9C, and now I have to do it again for DX10.1. Geeze Louise.

I am going to use this over priced SLI brick I built as a browse the internet PC. nVidia got the last dollar they will ever get from me and use the xbox 360 for games!

Speaking of SLI, what marketing hype that is. When they have an application that SLI is required to run, then it may be worth looking at. I have never seen SLI as part of Minimum Systems requirements to run anything.

[Brian_S]

And so ends this lovely thread of bickering and finger pointing.

Feel free to start another, try to make it more productive than this one please. Or I'll close that too.