Gaming crashing because of driver?

T

theDreamer

2[H]4U
Joined
Oct 11, 2006
Messages
2,513
Lately when playing Left 4 Dead my game will crash with a driver error, I thought it was a heat issue since most of the time it happened it was the middle of the day and I had no cold air in the house. Though tonight with the air on and a refresh boot after ten minutes of play it happened. Here is what I copied from windows, any thoughts? I was thinking of a driver update maybe, best way to update the drive? Do I need to wipe the old driver and install a fresh nvidia driver or install over the old? Thanks.

Product
Windows

Problem
Video hardware error

Date
4/16/2009 8:38 PM

Status
Not Reported

Description
A problem with your video hardware caused Windows to stop working correctly.

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: LiveKernelEvent
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033

Files that help describe the problem
WD-20090416-2037.dmp
sysdata.xml
Version.txt

Extra information about the problem
BCCode: 117
BCP1: FFFFFA800A553010
BCP2: FFFFFA600281E1A0
BCP3: 0000000000000000
BCP4: 0000000000000000
OS Version: 6_0_6001
Service Pack: 1_0
Product: 256_1
 
Found the exact error:

Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered
 
Believe it or not, I think I have this same issue. It's pretty rare, probably once out of every 15 times I play the game - usually I believe it has to do with someone IMing me in the background, or other stuff... For example, I was streaming a hockey game yesterday while playing :p and then it crashed after I tried to alt tab.

I am on Windows 7 Beta, with the 181 beta drivers for an 8800GTX. I was chalking it up to the beta-ness of everything. What's funny is that I am able to alt-tab quickly right as it freezes, and try too end the l4d process, but my system will still bluescreen with nvlddmkm error after a few seconds. If you have any other info please let me know. Thanks.
 
The only times I've ever had that error are when I first purchased a faulty card (which I exchanged) and when my card overheated. Are you using any programs to manage your fan speeds ie. rivatuner? You can try updating drivers by wiping the old drivers and then installing the new ones.
 
Sorry for the late replies, was out of town with no internet access.
I run L4D in window mode, with usually firefox, pidgin, and foobar2000. I updated the drives and used EVGA precision to monitor temparatures while playing, and I never broke 80° during the final game I played. The card is a year old and has never had problems until recently, but it could be multiple programs running in the background, I also have decided to cut out some programs that run all the time that I rarely use.

zeezz, I never get a blue screen which is weird, what happens is my screen goes black (both actually) and then will pop up. I will attempt to alt+tab and if I get L4D to minimize my screens will run and I have to force quit the game. My error is usually one of those yellow pop up tabs in the bottom right corner of my screen.

Thanks for the help.
 
I have the same problem on the rig in my sig in Bioshock and WoW so far. Haven't tried much else yet. Bioshock I have to force closed from taskmgr. WoW pops back up and I can keep playing.

I really don't know what's going on. 3dMark and Furmark run w/ no problem for as long as I want. My temp in furmark maxes out at about 90 C.

:(
 
Just to let you know, in windwos 7 7068 i'v tried a 8800gts 320mb. 8800gt, and a gtx 280 and all of them gave me driver problems :(
 
try to roll back to 178 driver. 180+ driver is giving me the same issue as you mentioned. after i roll back to 178, l4d has been running great
 
I had the same issues with the 180.48 driver and the 181.22 every month or so with Rfactor, I found that uninstalling the driver, and then running Driver Cleaner solves the problem, although one of the original 260's was faulty when I got hit with the nvlddmkm error, especially when the graphics would get messed up.
 
First post after lurking for years...:)

I just installed a BFG GTX285 (replaced 8800GT) and I was getting a similar issue. Playing STALKER Complete 2009, the game would hang for second, get minimized then the screen would go to like 640x480 16 color mode.
If I go back into the minimized game, it's just a black screen but sounds like its still playing in the background.

I actually have to shut it down completely and cold boot to get things back to normal. I just updated the drivers to the latest "official" release. Won't have time to play again until later tonight.
 
Doh, sorry to follow up my own post. It also gave me a message about the video driver causing the problem, which is why I posted here.
 
If you search, you will find lots of people who have (and still are having) the dreaded nvlddmkm error, either in BSOD or other forms. Keep an open mind about this as I have read various apparent causes and fixes e.g. video card faulty, memory faulty, too much memory, poor PSU, bad overclocking (some needed to underclock), software problems and last but not least, driver problems.

If you go eliminate all else except driver issues and have done the deinstall, safe mode clean, reinstall and still have issues, have a read of this:

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=518749

It's what helped me out in the end.
 
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