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Repeated nvlddmkm driver issues

marcus2704

marcus2704

marcus2704

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Joined
7 Aug 2005
Posts
358
I have built a gaming PC which until recently was working fine. However I am now plagued by driver crashes (screen goes black, flickers, and returns to desktop) which show in the event log as:

"Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered"

At first I thought it was one game (Far Cry 4) but its appearing on other games now and also benchmarks.

My hardware is as follows:

Zotac Amp Extreme 980TI
I7 4690K CPU
EVGA SuperNova G2 850W PSU
TeamGroup Xtreem LV "Frost Edition" 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-21300C11 2666MHz Dual Channel Kit
MSI Z97S SLI Krait Edition Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard
Antec Kúhler H2O 1250 Liquid CPU Cooler
512GB SSD

Software:
Windows 10
Latest Geforce Game Ready Drivers (have tried a few older ones)

I am not overclocking the 980TI, nor running any additional tools that would affect the factory running of the card.

So far I have tried each of the below with no luck ridding myself of this problem:

Reinstalled drivers (clean install)
Defaulted BIOS
Reseated graphics card
Reconnected power cables on graphics card
Reseated memory
Change power settings in NVIDIA Control Panel > Manage 3D settings > Power Management > Changed to "Prefer maximum performance".

Tried the below registry edit (suggested elsewhere) to increase delay on TDR:

1. Go to your registry: Start –> Run –> Type in “Regedit”
2. Go to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers” and create a key of type “DWORD (32-bit)” or “QWORD (64-bit)” (depending on what system you’re using) and name “TdrDelay” with a value of 10 as Decimal value.
3. Reboot and play

I am in the process of reverting back to Windows 8.1 from Windows 10 as I dont know where else to go with this one.

Does anyone have any advise as to how to fix this...?
 
Last edited:
Sounds similar to issues I had recently on Win 7 & 10.

I resolved it quite easily by doing the following:
1: Enable the pagefile no matter how much physical ram you have.
2: Ensure your Ram is stock clocks/timings only no ocing.

For some reason the newer Nvidia drivers can be unstable with ocing & no page file. Since I made those changes its been rock solid stable.

As soon as I disable the pagefile & or change Ram settings from stock the issue returns.

These drivers seem to be very sensitive to Ram timings especially.
 
Try DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) and reinstall drivers. I had this a long time ago and even clean installing kept doing it. A complete clean sorted it for me.
 
The only time I have ever had this problem was when my overclock was unstable (both my 7970 at its factory overclock, and my G1 Gaming 980Ti when I was pushing it) - If what Greg suggest doesn't fix it, try raising the Power Limit on Afterburner/Precision.
 
Clean install of the drivers (355.82) in addition to disabling GPU acceleration in IE/Edge has resolved this for me.
 
Thank you for all the replies :)

I removed Windows 10 and went back to 8.1, fully updated, and installed the latest game ready driver and the problem remained.

I have since installed a developer driver (linked in the OCUK Nvidea driver thread) version 358.78 and so far have had no more occurances of this. Its too early to say its fixed but its looking promising so far.

If it is a driver problem, then it does make me wonder as to the value of updating graphic drivers at all, if it aint broke and all that. This is the first time I have had issues like this with a Nvidea card, its pretty frustrating to say the least.
 
Glad you've got it fixed.

marcus2704 said:
If it is a driver problem, then it does make me wonder as to the value of updating graphic drivers at all, if it aint broke and all that.
Click to expand...

I used to live by this - I was using the 12.11 drivers on my old 7970 for well over two years, until GTA:V came out in fact, because they worked fine, and I never had a problem.
 
Asus Strix 980 Ti here. Windows 7 X64 ultimate. Tested : GTA V, Lord of The Fallen, Unigine Heaven, 3dmark 13, Witcher 3.... no single driver crash.

So i think your Zotac AMP is not stable.
 
My hope that the 358.78 driver had fixed it was short lived as tonight it has been crashing with the same error over and over rending playing games impossible.

There are only two more options I can think of -
1 - The PC is connected to my Pioneer receiver by HDMI, I am going to connect the PC direct to a monitor to see if this helps. I don't know why it would, other than some HDMI handshake issue, but its worth a try.
2 - Keep trying alternate drivers, I have tried 4 to this point all do the same.

The Zotac is under warranty, I am not convinced its a hardware issue but have nowhere else to go if the above doesn't work.
 
If this continues to happen repeatedly on different drivers then it's usually because the GPU is screwed. Solder is the main culprit for "Driver crashed and then recovered"

If it keeps happening you need to RMA it.
 
Thanks, I have been in touch with OCUK and have a RMA for this. Only thing is it needs to go back to Zotac, and turnaround for repair is up to 28 days. Perfect timing for Fallout 4! :/
 
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