Vista problem- "Display driver stopped responding."

Hi, I have had my laptop for a couple of months. It came with vista on it and has 2 gigs of ram. If has a nividia go 7600 graphics card on it, but every now and then i get a problem where the screen goes black then comes back and it says graphics driver has stopped responding but has recovered. This happens when my computer is just ideling, not only when i'm playing games. I have upgraded the graphics driver multiple times and all of the drivers have the same problem. Any solutions and is this happening to everyone using Vista?

-davkal

 

Did you try uninstalling the Go 7600 from Device Manager, along with checking the box to delete all drivers for this device?

After reboot Vista will install the standard VGA adapter, at which point you can then install the nvidia driver version of your choosing. I find that installing driver upon driver (without first removing) causes the corruption that you are experiencing.

 

So i go to the device manager unistall the 7600 and all the drivers. Restart windows. It will install the vga adaptor automatically? Then I can just install the driver i pick?

-davkal

 

I know that Vista will restart the graphics system if it thinks you're playing protected content or something is amiss in the driver. It could be a side-effect of DRM. By idling, do you mean that you aren't doing ANYTHING, or are you playing any movies or anything?

 

It will happen when i just don't do anything, and also sometimes when im surfing the net.

-davkal

 

It was the same for me. Uninstalling the gpu and reinstalling usually corrects the errors (unless the chosen driver is lousy).

 

Ok, i just uninstalled the 7600 then reinstalled with the driver I wanted and have not had any problems so far..

thanks

davkal

 

Where can I find a list of compatible drivers (nVidia or otherwise) for the NVS140m? I'm getting the same error - and my laptop (D830) is factory fresh!

 

It just happened again, and i've been searching around and it seems like a problem that can not be fixed untiil nvidia comes out with better drivers.

-davkal

 

Have you tried different drivers, or do you keep using the same one again?

 

I had the exact same problem out of the box. The blackouts would be utterly random, and all I could think was, "Why the hell would they ship something like this?" I eventually found updated drivers on Dell's support page ( Vista-32; Vista-64; XP.) for the NVS 140m. I installed them last night, and haven't had the problem recur since. And my laptop's been on for 16 hours straight, now.

It also, apparently, resolved the minor millisecond-long slowdowns and hiccups I was noticing with Flip3D.

 

I have tried almost every driver and everyone of them gives me the same problem.

-davkal

 

If you are uninstalling old drivers before installing new ones and keep getting video errors, then I'd think an OS reinstall may be in order (either that or the unit has a hardware problem).

My Go 7200 uses the same drivers as yours, and I have yet to have any problems with version 7.15.11.6215 under Vista (from laptopvideo2go).

 

I have a compal HEL80 I bought it from discountlaptops.com, should i send it back to them and ask them to fix it?

-davkal

 

If it is a problem that you cannot resolve by yourself, then yes.