Crash - "nvlddmkm stopped responding" all the info I can find

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de Carabas
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Crash - "nvlddmkm stopped responding" all the info I can find

Postby de Carabas » Sat Feb 20, 2016 6:25 pm

Since upgrading from a GTX660 to a GTX970 I'm getting the occasional 'crash' to desktop, the screen goes black and then E: D vanishes. At this point I scrabble around to try and kill the game as it's normally when in combat, flying through asteroids or just jumping to a new star.
For me this is accompanied by a 'Warning' level event 4101 in the eventlog that says "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered."

This is a common error from searching both in the FD forum and elsewhere on the internet. It effects some people with some games. In my case I can play the new Tomb Raider game without any issues, so it must be some interaction between the game and the GPU (load, usage spikes, temperature fluctuations or whatever).

I've been trying to stop this occuring and there are many, many different 'fixes' which I thought it would make sense to put in one place for anyone else struggling with this.

Fixes that have appeared to help others (in the order that I'm going through them):
1) complete clean removal and reinstall of the most recent drivers. I used http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/...-download.html Tried, no joy
2) going back to an earlier driver version Tried, no joy
3) upgrading the PSU to ensure proper consistant power to the card Tried, no joy
4) down clocking the card Tried, no joy
5) adding a key for TdrDelay to the registry Tried, no joy
6) running the game in windowed mode. Tried, no joy
7) changing the GPU fan profile to be more aggressive Tried, no joy
8) changing a setting in nvidia control panel -> Display-> Adjust desktop Size and Position ->Scaling, choose "fullscreen" and MAKE SURE TO CHECK" override the scaling mode set by games and programs". Tried, no joy
9) Set Power Management Mode in NVIDIA Control panel to 'performance' Tried, no joy
10) forcing xboost mode (might just be EVGA cards)
11) Check and replace system RAM one way to check it RAM checked. no errors found
12) I use COMODO for security - try game mode.Tried, no joy
13) Replace the card under warranty.
14) editing the firmware on the GPU itself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjEQmZrRmtE
15) full clean re-install of the operating system

I've now tried 1-9. Of course if I now have success I don't know if it was no. 8 on it's own or a combination of one or more of the others but....
If I need to find more suggestions I'll add them here and I might change the order I try them.

Has anyone else overcome this and did it following other guidance?

UPDATE: Added a couple more things to try if needed.
UPDATE: Added more things to try and decided to add comments for what I've tried so far
Last edited by de Carabas on Wed Feb 24, 2016 6:23 pm, edited 5 times in total.
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Re: Crash - "nvlddmkm stopped responding" all the info I can find

Postby StaticRadion » Sat Feb 20, 2016 6:50 pm

Yes, I believe so but, it was an internal conflict between versions of direct X that was causing the crash for me. I had over 50 games installed at once in the past and they all had their respective redist of directx and I think there was more than one version with a duplicate name or a package was rewriting another that had edits. I can't remember exactly what the issue was, but I have a feeling that your #11 is actually solving that problem.
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Re: Crash - "nvlddmkm stopped responding" all the info I can find

Postby de Carabas » Sat Feb 20, 2016 7:17 pm

StaticRadion wrote:... but I have a feeling that your #11 is actually solving that problem.

and that's why it last. The inconvenience of a full re-install I can cope with but the grief from my family? Not a chance ;)
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Re: Crash - "nvlddmkm stopped responding" all the info I can find

Postby Black Rose » Sat Feb 20, 2016 8:03 pm

This may sound unrelated BUT.

I have a relatively new system, got it in September of last year. I have the nVida GTX 970 and I was getting exactly what you are describing. It turned out not to be anything related to the card, or the drivers. It was a bad memory stick in my system memory.

I got a new set of memory, 16 gigs under warranty and the problem stopped.

I have to find the tech support emails but after I changed the system memory, all of the weird crashes stopped.

From what I understood, and I am no systems guru, the system memory fails and the card is like "um, what am I supposed to display?" and goes into a funk briefly and then recovers. That recovery cycle is to prevent damage to the card. Its like when you system powers down when it gets too hot so as not to trash something really important like the CPU :(

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Re: Crash - "nvlddmkm stopped responding" all the info I can find

Postby de Carabas » Sat Feb 20, 2016 8:38 pm

Black Rose wrote:This may sound unrelated BUT.

I have a relatively new system, got it in September of last year. I have the nVida GTX 970 and I was getting exactly what you are describing. It turned out not to be anything related to the card, or the drivers. It was a bad memory stick in my system memory.

I got a new set of memory, 16 gigs under warranty and the problem stopped.

I have to find the tech support emails but after I changed the system memory, all of the weird crashes stopped.

From what I understood, and I am no systems guru, the system memory fails and the card is like "um, what am I supposed to display?" and goes into a funk briefly and then recovers. That recovery cycle is to prevent damage to the card. Its like when you system powers down when it gets too hot so as not to trash something really important like the CPU :(


I've read that somewhere else as well. I've kind of ignored it as it wasn't an issue before I changed the card but clearly that's no proof!
I've also seen one post from someone who swapped out the power cable to their card and another that reseated the power cable to a different component. It's a ridiculously vague, catch-all type error that's a real in the arse to sort.

Their must be a diagnostic app somewhere to check the memory, surely?
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Re: Crash - "nvlddmkm stopped responding" all the info I can find

Postby Black Rose » Sat Feb 20, 2016 10:22 pm

de Carabas wrote:
Black Rose wrote:This may sound unrelated BUT.

I have a relatively new system, got it in September of last year. I have the nVida GTX 970 and I was getting exactly what you are describing. It turned out not to be anything related to the card, or the drivers. It was a bad memory stick in my system memory.

I got a new set of memory, 16 gigs under warranty and the problem stopped.

I have to find the tech support emails but after I changed the system memory, all of the weird crashes stopped.

From what I understood, and I am no systems guru, the system memory fails and the card is like "um, what am I supposed to display?" and goes into a funk briefly and then recovers. That recovery cycle is to prevent damage to the card. Its like when you system powers down when it gets too hot so as not to trash something really important like the CPU :(


I've read that somewhere else as well. I've kind of ignored it as it wasn't an issue before I changed the card but clearly that's no proof!
I've also seen one post from someone who swapped out the power cable to their card and another that reseated the power cable to a different component. It's a ridiculously vague, catch-all type error that's a real in the arse to sort.

Their must be a diagnostic app somewhere to check the memory, surely?


Have you contacted nVidia tech support or EVGA? Oh yes there are a ton of them but I'd go to the site for the company that makes your memory. In the mean time I will look for the one I used in this archive of tech support emails.

Another item was discussed with my tech support regarding the same issue you are experiencing and it stated that there might be a directX issue.

"So far this is looking like a software issue with Dragon Age Inquisition, primarily, based on the information that you were able to play other games without issue but when you loaded DA:I it crashed. Then when tried again it crashed at the same exact point.

The error you are getting is a direct X error not a driver error specifically, and it states that it “…failed due to badly formed commands sent by the application.”

I did a search for “dragon age inquisition Dxgi_error_device_hung” and found many articles about other players of that game having the same issues. Many claim one sort of fix or another, the best quote about this issue I found is “…many threads with potential fixes exist, will the fixes work, that is a different story.” It seems that you have to keep trying until you find the fix that works for you on this issue.

Also there are many theories about what is to blame for this issue, most are not grounded in fact so I would ignore most people’s explanation why it happens and focus on seeing if the solution works for you. One of these comments I came across was “…all graphics cards are overclocked now days so direct x doesn’t know how to deal with them.” This is blatantly not true and is kind of like saying “all cars have turbos chargers now days and the road ways cannot handle the speed.”

Anyway I don’t think this is a failure of your hardware so much as an issue with the DA:I software."

Here is a link to Crucial.com which is the memory in my system. As far as I know any reputable companies utility will work.

http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/support-memory?cm_re=top-nav-_-flyout-support-_-us-support-product-support-memory

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Re: Crash - "nvlddmkm stopped responding" all the info I can find

Postby de Carabas » Sun Feb 21, 2016 8:46 am

Black Rose wrote:
Here is a link to Crucial.com which is the memory in my system. As far as I know any reputable companies utility will work.

http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/support-memory?cm_re=top-nav-_-flyout-support-_-us-support-product-support-memory


I was wondering about upgrading my memory with Crucial a few weeks back. I might still go that route as my machine was shipped with one 8GB and one 4GB card and I always feel they should be a matched pair (how old fashioned!).

I ran the mdsched.exe this morning which didn't pick up any errors on my RAM. I also managed 1.5 hours without a crash which is promising but I didn't try a RES site to really stress it.
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Re: Crash - "nvlddmkm stopped responding" all the info I can find

Postby de Carabas » Sun Feb 21, 2016 3:37 pm

de Carabas wrote: I also managed 1.5 hours without a crash which is promising but I didn't try a RES site to really stress it.


Nope had another failure this afternoon. I decided to open the PC up and check it over again. I removed a fair amount of dust from the CPU fan, re-seated the memory and GPU and checked all the cables. One of the power cables was lose (powers my front bay eSATA /SD card reader etc).
Now back to the monitoring.
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Re: Crash - "nvlddmkm stopped responding" all the info I can find

Postby Cmdr Kharma » Sun Feb 21, 2016 3:43 pm

The only time I have had that error was when the GPU fans and fins were full of crud......

Took an air blower to it and the errors stopped......
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Re: Crash - "nvlddmkm stopped responding" all the info I can find

Postby de Carabas » Sun Feb 21, 2016 4:38 pm

Cmdr Kharma wrote:The only time I have had that error was when the GPU fans and fins were full of crud......

Took an air blower to it and the errors stopped......

Yep, that's certainly one of the causes as I guess that would cause overheating.
Not the case for me though, nice clean shiny new GPU....
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