Video Driver Crash(annoying to say the least)

"Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding, but has succesfully recovered."

so this happens totally randomly during gameplay in big games like CoD4(not any Source games, though...), and from what I've found there's no fix for it, so basically my screen will freeze, turn black, the sound will skip, and after 30-120 seconds, everything will resume, often with severe lag in game afterwards, or being booted for my ping spike

I'm using a Dell Inspiron 1520 Intel Core2 Duo T7300 2.00 GHz, 4gigs of RAM(3.5 recognized by windows) and a NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT, and Vista Home Premium

any help would be REALLY appreciated!!!

 

your card over clocked ? mine does this when the OC is not stable... If i run stable frequencies it never happens though. In any case if the driver fails you need to RESTART your system before gaming again.. or the same thing will keep happening.

only read this part if your card IS oc'ed: i can set my clocks to as much as 630/480 and still be able to pass the 3dmark06 tests... But in games i get the same problem you do meaning the games fail and the screen freezes up. In any case moving down to a stable frequency of 600/465 fixed the problem for me.

 

what driver are you using?

 

no overclocking, it's a laptop, and I dont remember which one, I think I might just have to wipe it all and reinstall everything at default or something

but from what I've looked at online, nobody has a solution yet, not Microsoft, Nvidia, or Dell

 

Try the mobile drivers at laptopvideo2go. One of the slightly older WHQL drivers might stop your crashing problems. The 160 series in general is still in Beta so installing them may not always help.

 

i had this exact same problem when i got my machine on friday,its justt he dell drivers

downlaod the modded inf 160.04 driver from laptop to go and install witht he have disk method, theres a guid on there to how to do it

then you wont get the error , theres no need to instal everything, just do that !

 

You are not alone. COD4 crashes quiet often on my 1520. From what I heard, only dell's 8600GT machines has problem with COD4.

 

hmm, yeah Dell and their stupid drivers really upsets me

crap, video 2 go is down

will this never END?

I've also heard it may be tied to overheating, maybe the 1520 doesnt cool the card as well as other computers?

 

Oddly enough I'm getting crashes in CoD4 with my system seen below as well.
And guess what? I have my card overclocked as well.

 

I'm having the same problem with my 1720, playing Half-Life 2. I've been trying to download a new driver, I've heard that 169.04is a good one. When I install it I'll let you know how it works.

 

I am almost positive it isn't the drivers entirely

it's overheating

I had my computer off all day, and I turned it on and started playing shortly after, the air coming out of the fans was still cool

everything was gravy for maybe an hour and a half, when it froze the first time

the bottom of the computer, and the air were both very hot

when it happened again, twice 30 seconds apart, it was even hotter

a logical deduction would be that it's overheating, failing, and the computer is misinterpreting the cause for the problem

 

Time to clean the fans and air vents for you. Do try the driver updates as well just in case the cleaning doesn't solve the problems.

 

clean them already? I've had the computer 2 months!

(how do I go about cleaning them...)

and apparently my drivers are the most current...

 

State your driver version. 169.12 should be the most recent for XP x86. Most hardcore users clean their vents every 2 months so you're probably due a cleaning.

Try this link for how to keep your notebook cool.

 

it's not that .
i have the same problem with any of the drivers .... .04, .09 , .12 , you name it .
and my laptop is 3 days old .... so .....

the problem is with the drivers ... non of them work correctly .

PS: Yes, i did use the moded infs from laptopvideo2go

 

Some users have reported that the laptopvideo2go drivers are the international version, I think this means that two or more versions for one driver might exist for one OS.

 

i think there are 2 versions

enlgish and international . right ?

 

If the english version doesn't work for you try the international one. Repeat all the same steps as you did before with the english version.

 

yeah I'm using 169.12 right now

and I'll check out the cleaning thing, basic maintenance is always good to know

 

Well, what are the chances? I get this error twice tonight, find a 113-page thread about it on the nVIDIA forums (with no resolution), and then it's the subject of the top thread on the gaming subforum here. Needless to say, I'm a little about this issue.

Running Vista Home Premium (curse Vista, the cause of all evils), 156.55 drivers from Dell (Oct 29 on Dell's site). I've had four crashes today:

1. Battlefield 1942 mysteriously quit as soon as I started a map; worked thereafter.

2. Cleanup stopped working. Same "Cleanup has stopped working" error as BF1942 gave; the "Vista crash" type as I've come to call it.

3. Halo 1 PC twice. Both times the screen went blank for a few seconds, and the next thing I saw was a "Halo has stopped responding error", and then this:



There's no simple fix from nVIDIA, either. I had been running the 169.02 drivers (from laptopdrivers2go), which I overclocked for about an hour to 485/413, with no apparant trouble, but at stock settings it gave signficant artifact problems while playing Halo, particularly on the Hang'em High map. So I went with the 156.55 drivers, the latest from Dell. I still have the artifacts, and now these crashes. At this point I'm planning to revert to the 101.xx drivers from Dell in June that seemed to work fine - fortunately they're still on my hard drive.

From the nVIDIA thread of 2200 posts+, it seemed the only fix that consistently worked was reverting to XP. And with as many Vista problems as I had even before this, I think I might do that. I'm tired of nuking Vista to get things working again. XP never gave me problems like this - 3.11, 95, and 98 didn't, either. Sure, they weren't nearly as stable as XP, but at least I could play a game without expecting it to crash.

 

Apollo13 , do you have dream scene activated ? i noticed that i get the same error when i click on the "show desktop" icon IF dreamscene is activated. if i use a normal wallpaper then everything is ok .

can someone else try to use dreamscene and open a lot of windows and then click on the show desktop icon and see if anything bad happens.