Graphic driver problem

[RedHyuuga]

I have a very disturbing error with my graphic driver. At first I thought it was my old graphic card not being compatible with win 7 - 64bit, and when I asked about it, my graphic card was "stone-age" so I updated and bought a new one.

But the problem remains, and I don't know how many times I've tried different drivers and even the driver on the CD following the graphic card when I bought it.
Updating to the latest driver doesn't help, already tried it. I'm starting to think there's something else triggering it, dunno what though.

When it decides to act up the screen/monitor goes black and everything freezes, and when it gets back I have an error message saying:

"Display driver stopped responding and has recovered" (I don't remember what it says after that since I don't have a screenshot of it.)

It wasn't so bad before, never happened while I was gaming or well it did, but it only froze the game for a split second.
Now it's awful, it freezes the game for seconds and the audio freezes too and it sounds like some digital computer noise (making you tear off your headset to spare your ears).

The games I play varies from L4D, L4D2, T2 and other non Steam games.
Though it never crashes the games when it happens, it only crashes Photoshop, so it shuts down but still running in the background and making me have to open the task manager > process to force it to shut down the specific process.
It's annoying, and I don't really know how to solve this problem and I was hoping someone out there could help me.

I also use double monitors.
I'm just wondering what I have missed to solve this problem?
I'll see if I can find all my specs to share beneath:


Operating system: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (6.1, build 7601)
System Manufacturer: MSI
System Model: MS-7320
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Quad CPU @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.4GHz
Memory: 8192MB RAM
DirectX Version: DirectX 11


Device Name: NVDIA GeForce GTX 460
Driver Version: 8.17.12.8026
Driver Date: 2011-08-03 12:50:00
Driver DDI Version: 11
DirectDraw Acceleration: Activated
Direct3D Acceleration: Activated
AGP Texture Acceleration: Activated


If I have forgotten something, just ask and I'll try to find it. Thanks in advance for your time and help.

[MSTRB]

Ahh welcome to the TDR club. My membership just expired & I hope never to return :p

I had the EXACT same problem when I upgraded from a 5850 to a GTX 580.
I tried literally everything. It drove me insane for the best part of 5 months :(

My problem turned out to be a single faulty stick of RAM (No tests picked it up)

Have you tried running Windows memcheck on your RAM? Also try running memtest86 for 7 passes (I passed both of these, so it's not 100% fool proof)

[RedHyuuga]

Ahh welcome to the TDR club. My membership just expired & I hope never to return :p

I had the EXACT same problem when I upgraded from a 5850 to a GTX 580.
I tried literally everything. It drove me insane for the best part of 5 months :(

My problem turned out to be a single faulty stick of RAM (No tests picked it up)

Have you tried running Windows memcheck on your RAM? Also try running memtest86 for 7 passes (I passed both of these, so it's not 100% fool proof)

TDR club?
Faulty stick of RAM you say, how do I run the Windows memcheck?
It's worth a shot. I've been struggling with this problem for a while now, dunno how many months it's been now.

[tr0n187]

Interesting. I have this same problem. I upgraded from 4870 to 580 GTX and leave my comp on all the time. After about 3 days I get crazy driver crashes. I did a RAM test with memtest 86 and found nothing. I might do individual sticks and see what happens. Was there anything specific you did with the testing to find the bad RAM?

[rotNdude]

The TDR feature was introduced in Windows Vista and carried over to Win7. This is probably one of the most frustrating errors I have ever had to troubleshoot on a computer. I personally feel that Microsoft tried to fix an annoying problem with BSODs, but also introduced a solution that may not have been fully understood by video card manufacturers. Instead of getting a BSOD, you get annoying messages regarding the timeout error until you finally got the BSOD.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg487368
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/737-27116RadeonSeries-ATIKMDAGhasstoppedrespondingerrormessages.aspx
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=215256
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=213670&st=200&p=1316377&#entry1316377

When I had this problem with my 8800GTX on Vista X64, I had to remove one RAM module out of the four. The RAM all tested fine. So, instead of having 4GB of RAM, I only had 3GB.

[RedHyuuga]

The TDR feature was introduced in Windows Vista and carried over to Win7. This is probably one of the most frustrating errors I have ever had to troubleshoot on a computer. I personally feel that Microsoft tried to fix an annoying problem with BSODs, but also introduced a solution that may not have been fully understood by video card manufacturers. Instead of getting a BSOD, you get annoying messages regarding the timeout error until you finally got the BSOD.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg487368
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/737-27116RadeonSeries-ATIKMDAGhasstoppedrespondingerrormessages.aspx
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=215256
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=213670&st=200&p=1316377&#entry1316377

When I had this problem with my 8800GTX on Vista X64, I had to remove one RAM module out of the four. The RAM all tested fine. So, instead of having 4GB of RAM, I only had 3GB.

Thanks for the links, I hope this will solve my problem because it's annoying as hell.

So you plucked out one RAM to see what would happen or how did you do it?

[tr0n187]

+rep rotn

gives me a few things to check out at least. Don't suppose you have a quick way to check ram? memcheck 86 takes about 30min to run. I'd hate to do that to every stick... but maybe just 1-2 will make it go quicker. I will try when I get home.

[Sinhealer]

I like rotNdude battled this for months until I got a fix(I took the OC of my graphic card and underclocked it about 1-2% and the problem was finally gone).

I can not find the site that I was posting on when I had this problem(it was a few years ago now)but here is a similar 1 with a few tips to try.

http://www.nvlddmkm.com/

I think people will be surprised at just how many people have problems with this.

[rotNdude]

When I had this problem, I literally was pulling my hair out trying to figure it out. I unseated and reseated the card, substituted a known good PSU, tried all different versions of drivers, flashed and reflashed the BIOS, downclocked the video card, made sure temperatures were fine, tested RAM, and the list goes on.

I finally just decided to take a RAM module out and the problem went away. I think it may have been an issue with the North Bridge on the motherboard, but once I figured out it was because I was running four RAM modules, I was just glad to have it solved and moved on.

[RedHyuuga]

When I had this problem, I literally was pulling my hair out trying to figure it out. I unseated and reseated the card, substituted a known good PSU, tried all different versions of drivers, flashed and reflashed the BIOS, downclocked the video card, made sure temperatures were fine, tested RAM, and the list goes on.

I finally just decided to take a RAM module out and the problem went away. I think it may have been an issue with the North Bridge on the motherboard, but once I figured out it was because I was running four RAM modules, I was just glad to have it solved and moved on.

I certainly can understand the ripping hair out, because it is really frustrating.
I will check the RAM tomorrow, if that's what's causing it. Though I guess it'll take a while to find out or how fast did you guys find out?

[tr0n187]

I'm going to run some diagnostics and read those links provided. I'll try to keep a running log, but it will take me a few days (after a shutdown) to even see if it made a difference. If you find a solution quicker, try to post the steps/results.

[MSTRB]

I tested all of my RAM with memcheck and memtest86 overnight for 7 passes (recommended)

Then I decided to take 1 stick of RAM out & try playing games & noticed I had no errors.

So I assumed the one I took out was faulty, removed all good RAM & put the 'faulty' stick in on its own. Low and behold it wouldn't boot.

So I replaced the faulty RAM with a known good stick on its own and my PC booted. Its been fine ever since. I was running 6GB for a while but yesterday got a new 4GB stick :)

[Sinhealer]

I certainly can understand the ripping hair out, because it is really frustrating.
I will check the RAM tomorrow, if that's what's causing it. Though I guess it'll take a while to find out or how fast did you guys find out?

It took quite some time to sort.I ran tests on the heat on my card and CPU also on the RAM but could not find any problems,I then sent my graphic card back to the shop to be tested,they stress tested it for 24 hours and they found no problems,I then got my PSU tested which again showed no problems.

I then tried a few of the hotfix's that I linked earlier but they did not work for me,I then decided it must be some sort of false positive so then finally started to work on my graphic card and take the clocks down.

I stayed up to the small hours some nights searching for a fix and I think it took me around 3-4 months of trying all different things and trying my games,even when it was fixed I was still waiting for it to return while playing games and not until I had around 100 hours of gaming behind me was I convinced it was sorted.

A horrid problem that I would not wish on anyone in the pc gaming world.

[RedHyuuga]

It took quite some time to sort.I ran tests on the heat on my card and CPU also on the RAM but could not find any problems,I then sent my graphic card back to the shop to be tested,they stress tested it for 24 hours and they found no problems,I then got my PSU tested which again showed no problems.

I then tried a few of the hotfix's that I linked earlier but they did not work for me,I then decided it must be some sort of false positive so then finally started to work on my graphic card and take the clocks down.

I stayed up to the small hours some nights searching for a fix and I think it took me around 3-4 months of trying all different things and trying my games,even when it was fixed I was still waiting for it to return while playing games and not until I had around 100 hours of gaming behind me was I convinced it was sorted.

A horrid problem that I would not wish on anyone in the pc gaming world.

I can certainly feel you, I still haven't tested the RAM yet. Though the weird part that some days it happens more often while other days it barely happens, and those days I'm so happy until I hear the computer working and freezing slightly to open the explorer and I'm goes into a chant mode of "don't, don't, don't".

Now when I think about it I believe the RAM might be the cause. Especially when I open explorer and goes into specific harddrives it always takes a moment for the computer to open them, and mostly cause it's freezes.
I don't think it's the harddrives that are faulty, if so then nothing would work, right?

[MSTRB]

The best way to check your RAM is to remove all but one stick and try to boot it. If it boots and doesn't freeze then that stick is fine.

Replace with another stick and repeat until you find one that doesn't boot.

[Sinhealer]

I can certainly feel you, I still haven't tested the RAM yet. Though the weird part that some days it happens more often while other days it barely happens, and those days I'm so happy until I hear the computer working and freezing slightly to open the explorer and I'm goes into a chant mode of "don't, don't, don't".

That is the biggest problem with this error,sometimes I could play a game for say 4 hours and have no problem,the next day I would play the same game and after 10 minutes it would happen,maybe even 3 or 4 times in 20 minutes.
This makes it a long drawn out process as there is not 1 fix for everyone so it is trial and error.
You try 1 fix and play away and you wait to see if it is fixed,if it comes back after anywhere between say 10 minutes to maybe 4/5 hours of gaming then it is back to the "Google" to search for more answers...rinse and repeat.

[MSTRB]

If your card is factory overclocked then try reducing the clock's. If not then its probably faulty RAM.

[clairex1]

Try updating ur driver by going to the manufacture's website

[RedHyuuga]

The best way to check your RAM is to remove all but one stick and try to boot it. If it boots and doesn't freeze then that stick is fine.

Replace with another stick and repeat until you find one that doesn't boot.

Um...? My computer does boots just fine with all sticks in it, it doesn't freeze during boot up time though.
It tends to freeze when you're using it though.

[MSTRB]

Um...? My computer does boots just fine with all sticks in it, it doesn't freeze during boot up time though.
It tends to freeze when you're using it though.

I think you mid understood. My PC also booted with all sticks in (including the faulty one)

What I meant is, remove ALL but ONE stick of RAM. Then try to boot. If it boots. Swap it for another and boot.

Repeat until you get a stick that doesn't boot or until you've tested them all.

[tr0n187]

Tested all of my RAM and all sticks were able to boot my OS. I also ran a quick stress test with memtest and everything came out clean. I'd like to extensively test the RAM, but 16gb is a lot to go through :/

The only other thing I've done was disable the power management in the Nvidia software, changed it from "adaptive" to "prefer maximum performance." I also updated to the newest drivers earlier this week and have not seen the error, but I have been shutting down my PC a lot (which usually prevents the error for ~3 days). Time will tell mid this week I guess.

[RedHyuuga]

You try 1 fix and play away and you wait to see if it is fixed,if it comes back after anywhere between say 10 minutes to maybe 4/5 hours of gaming then it is back to the "Google" to search for more answers...rinse and repeat.
I certainly know, my partner helped me with the RAM. We thought that perhaps it was due to that there is 4 cards, and 2 are from one manufacturer and the other 2 from another.

It was placed like: blue, blue, green, green,

So we moved it to be blue, green, blue, green

But the errors remains so sometime tomorrow it's RAM testing day.

If your card is factory overclocked then try reducing the clock's. If not then its probably faulty RAM.
Though that doesn't explain why I had the exact same error with my old graphic card (which worked fine when I had 8GB on XP 32bit even though XP only uses 4GB), and I doubt they're overclocked. I dunno what that is to be honest.

I think you mid understood. My PC also booted with all sticks in (including the faulty one)

What I meant is, remove ALL but ONE stick of RAM. Then try to boot. If it boots. Swap it for another and boot.

Repeat until you get a stick that doesn't boot or until you've tested them all.
And what happens if it boots on all of them? What should I do then?

-

Btw,

This is how it looks when it crashes though..
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/4/graphix.jpg/

[Sinhealer]

Another cause for this I seen people reporting was there PSU not giving the constant power required,although they had say a 600w PSU which they thought was more than enough after they got it tested it was not giving the constant amps required,thus causing the card to be switched off.

Just another thing to watch for.

[MSTRB]

If it boots on all of them individually you can rule out faulty RAM.

The only other things I can suggest is changing to Single Display in the NVIDIA control panel & running MSI Afterburner with custom fan speeds to keep your temps down.

Other than that - Dust.

[RedHyuuga]

Another cause for this I seen people reporting was there PSU not giving the constant power required,although they had say a 600w PSU which they thought was more than enough after they got it tested it was not giving the constant amps required,thus causing the card to be switched off.

Just another thing to watch for.
I don't think I have any problems with the power source, cause my partners computer dies if we have a slight downtime in the power in the whole apartment, though mine can keep alive, if the downtime is very short. Of course with longer downtime it dies too.

Or maybe that doesn't matter?

If it boots on all of them individually you can rule out faulty RAM.

The only other things I can suggest is changing to Single Display in the NVIDIA control panel & running MSI Afterburner with custom fan speeds to keep your temps down.

Other than that - Dust.

Now I've checked the RAM, and it boots on all of them, individually. Though some were slower than the others, don't know if that's something to go by.
I'm only using 2 RAM sticks at the moment (out of my 4) and when I open explorer etc it's not freezing like it does before..
Though I heard that freezing noise my computer emits before the graphic driver crashes, but so far it have not crashed - yet.

Single display? As in using one screen or what?
If that's the case, I tried it when we had friends over to LAN. I had to move my computer to the living room, and I only need one screen to be able to game so.
It still froze and crashed.

What does fan speed have to do with it? :confused:

Dust is not a problem, I clean my computer on a regularly basis.

[Sinhealer]

Nah the power going down in your house is not something to go by,basically your PSU has to keep so many amps going to your card,some PSU's that are not of a good make boast they have so much watts but there amps are not very stable,or indeed not enough,if your card is not getting the amps it needs constantly then it can cause you problems...again this is just 1 cause.

The fan speed for your graphic card keeps the card cool,it comes set at a standard speed,this could be lets say 40%,you can use certain programs to speed up the fan if you are having heating issues.
I always tend to set my card's fan speed to around 60-70%,it does make a bit more noise but it is a small price to pay for keep your card cool when gaming.

[RedHyuuga]

Nah the power going down in your house is not something to go by,basically your PSU has to keep so many amps going to your card,some PSU's that are not of a good make boast they have so much watts but there amps are not very stable,or indeed not enough,if your card is not getting the amps it needs constantly then it can cause you problems...again this is just 1 cause.

The fan speed for your graphic card keeps the card cool,it comes set at a standard speed,this could be lets say 40%,you can use certain programs to speed up the fan if you are having heating issues.
I always tend to set my card's fan speed to around 60-70%,it does make a bit more noise but it is a small price to pay for keep your card cool when gaming.

I asked my partner for advice, and the power source is not a problem. The different parts of the computer gets its required power.

As for heating problems, don't think so. I have one big fan on the side of it, and some extra fans inside.
Besides if it was overheating, then it wouldn't froze and crash it would just be slow.

I've noticed that it doesn't crash when I only have 2 RAM sticks, so tomorrow I shall test further and see what'll happen with the other 2 sticks.

[Sinhealer]

Besides if it was overheating, then it wouldn't froze and crash it would just be slow

This is not true,from Vista onwards(I think RotNdude already said this)there is a safety feature(!)that would shut your graphic card down if there was a chance it could be damaged.

1.Your gaming goes slow if your card can not handle the load it is getting.
2.Your card will shut down if it is not getting the power it needs.

These 2 things are not the same.

[RedHyuuga]

This is not true,from Vista onwards(I think RotNdude already said this)there is a safety feature(!)that would shut your graphic card down if there was a chance it could be damaged.

1.Your gaming goes slow if your card can not handle the load it is getting.
2.Your card will shut down if it is not getting the power it needs.

These 2 things are not the same.

Still, overheating is not an issue.

1. My games load fine, and no lag.
2. though it's the graphic driver stopping to responding, not the card shutting down :confused:

*sigh* Seems I'm back to square one tomorrow, the driver just stopped responding, I'll switch to the two other RAM sticks and see if they are the same.

I don't like this problem, it's troublesome and really a bother.

[MSTRB]

Install MSI afterburner and set a custom fan curve and report back with temperatures before and after applying the curve (playing games)

Edit -

I've just had a thought. How many sticks of RAM do you have? 4x2GB? I know you've tested each one (presumably all in the same slot on the motherboard)

Well you should now try each stick in each slot and try to boot. Granted its a lot of booting but it will rule out a faulty slot.

[RedHyuuga]

Install MSI afterburner and set a custom fan curve and report back with temperatures before and after applying the curve (playing games)

Edit -

I've just had a thought. How many sticks of RAM do you have? 4x2GB? I know you've tested each one (presumably all in the same slot on the motherboard)

Well you should now try each stick in each slot and try to boot. Granted its a lot of booting but it will rule out a faulty slot.

I have no idea what MSI afterburner is (is it a software or something to the BIOS?) or how to set fan speed, that's not my area really. It's more my partner's area.
I fail to see how it would help, enlighten me?

I have 4x2GB (DDR2) the motherboard supports 16GB, though those 4GB sticks are expensive.

When I try that booting thing, and it boots up to the start screen, can one tell something from the time it takes to boot or (if it doesn't get stuck somewhere before that, that is)?

[MSTRB]

I have no idea what MSI afterburner is (is it a software or something to the BIOS?) or how to set fan speed, that's not my area really. It's more my partner's area.
I fail to see how it would help, enlighten me?

I have 4x2GB (DDR2) the motherboard supports 16GB, though those 4GB sticks are expensive.

When I try that booting thing, and it boots up to the start screen, can one tell something from the time it takes to boot or (if it doesn't get stuck somewhere before that, that is)?

Google it. It's a piece of software that you can overclock your card with and also monitor the temperature of your card, the GPU usage & fan speeds all in nice separate graphs.

Also in the settings you can simply adjust the graph to set a custom fan speed. It's really quite simple :)


You should try what I said in my last post about trying each stick in each slot on your motherboard. Be careful not to damage anything by static though.

[RedHyuuga]

Google it. It's a piece of software that you can overclock your card with and also monitor the temperature of your card, the GPU usage & fan speeds all in nice separate graphs.

Also in the settings you can simply adjust the graph to set a custom fan speed. It's really quite simple :)


You should try what I said in my last post about trying each stick in each slot on your motherboard. Be careful not to damage anything by static though.

I tried the each RAM stick in all of the slots individually, there wasn't any errors, well I got blue screen once, but I tried to boot again without moving the stick and didn't get blue screen.
I timed how long it took to boot and the fastest one was around 01:10.0 min while the average booting time was around 01:40.0 min.

Though I noticed that if I had one Blue and one Green, they didn't seem compatible with each other cause the computer was running very slow, though the driver didn't crash. Today I'm tested the two green ones, since I know that with the blue ones the driver still crashed.

We shall see what'll happen today.


Edit: I just noticed that MSI Afterburner is compatible with MSI Graphic cards, but mine isn't a MSI, it's a Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 1GB, or perhaps that doesn't matter or?

[tr0n187]

I've changed my Nvidia power feature as previously posted and have not run into as issues yet. I'm still within the time frame where a crash could occur, but have you tried this?

Also, the manufacturer of your card doesn't matter with MSI. You can still use the software to modify your settings.

[RedHyuuga]

I've changed my Nvidia power feature as previously posted and have not run into as issues yet. I'm still within the time frame where a crash could occur, but have you tried this?

Also, the manufacturer of your card doesn't matter with MSI. You can still use the software to modify your settings.

Tried what? I'm lost. :confused:

Oh, so that's how it works. I shall take a look at it.

[tr0n187]

Just wanted to report I have not seen the error message since I modified my power settings.


Tried what? I'm lost. :confused:

Oh, so that's how it works. I shall take a look at it.

Sorry, haven't visited this thread in a bit.

The setting I'm talking about is under "manage 3D settings" and if you stay on the global config tab there is an option called "power management mode" it will be set to "adaptive" change this to "prefer maximum performance" and see if that helps. I'm guessing my card was not coming out of sleep mode properly and that caused a driver crash.