how to solve nvlddmkm.sys

CDsDontBurn

i get this quite a bit at work. the potential fixes for this that i know are simply to uninstall and reinstall/update the driver through safe mode.

if this doesn't work, then reformat. that will usually solve the issue for anywhere between a few hours to a few weeks before the issue returns.

other than that, it's to swap out the video card. i don't know anything else to do other than that.

what have you guys done to solve this issue other than what i've already said?

ViRuS2k

Personaly i have found that none of the above work !.

what i have found out though is if you reduce your memory clock on your graphics card by 20mhz that will cure it.

CDsDontBurn

really?!

i take it you've come across this?

ViRuS2k

yup i have come across it. and underclocking the memory 20mhz if your at stock or underclocking the memory 20mhz overclocked, cured it.

Also bumping your PCI-Express Speeds to 110mhz from 100mhz made the cards stable.

CDsDontBurn

cool beans man!

drakes

im a newbee here,can u post the step by step process how to underclock the video driver?? my video card is geforce go 7300 acer notebook

pls help

Zardon

Interesting ive seen this issue quite often with 8800 ultras in SLI and even an 8800 ultra in single card mode, it crops up occassionally.

I have yet to see it with a 8800 GTS in single or SLI.

Quite what this means, I dont know, there are far too many variables, however it is something ive been looking into myself on a few systems recently trying to find a single source point, nothing concrete yet. However one of my working theories is that the ultras are "right on the edge" so whatever is causing the error in general is more evident.

CDsDontBurn

at work, i've seen this happen on a wide range of different cards have this error occur. everything from the high end 8 series cards, down to low end 6/7 series cards occur. so, from what i can gather, it's not specific to any particular card.

this makes me think that it is similar to winXP's nv_disp.dll BSOD.

for the most part though, in terms of resolutions for this issue, different drivers have usually solved the issue if you just get the crash to desktop and baloon pop-up nvlddmkm.sys error. however, if the nvlddmkm.sys turns into a BSOD, typically the card needs to be replaced.

Dalton Sleeper

Haven't seen this problem for a few months, don't know if it's driver related eighter, but the display driver on my laptop restarts quite often (on max power saving) when using modded drivers for HD2400, high performance work just fine.

Just in case I always set Power Plan on my main computer (Vista x64) to High Performance instead of Balanced, it'll disable all the power saving crap. The only setting that is kind of related to graphics is the PCI-Express Link State Power Management and on balanced it is on power saving by default.

From my experiences it could be a power saving issue, or maybe a crappy PSU. When playing NHL08 Vista shuts down my screen after a while so the power saving doesn't work 100%.

CDsDontBurn

you get his same error for an NVIDIA based gfx card on your ATI based gfx card?

Dalton Sleeper

The 8800 Ultra driver restarted in Vista before, sometimes bluescreen, same for the driver for HD2400, I have seen that error message several times but do not remember if it was the ATi or nVidia, it sounds like a nvidia driver and lies in the forceware package so probably the one with the nVidia card , but I havent seen this error for some time, latest drivers for everything incl Vista SP1 on both.

As I said I use the High Performance Profile (because of crashes earlier) on my main computer (see system specs) since the other profiles killed the display driver on my laptop quite often (not all drivers), it has a HD2400 but don't remember the error message now, but still caused by power saving profiles. These profiles often reduce speed and/or voltage or disables different devices so maybe it's possible that the error appear on a computer having a crappy PSU or some incompability with drivers, depends on when you get this error...

It seems that people with bad ram or heavy overklocked stuff get this error too, while other downclock their GFX to get it fixed as said above. If I still had this error I would've tried Prime95 v25 and memtest for about 12 hours each to exclude errors from CPU, MB and RAM, maybe to low nb voltage or vdimm, wrong timings? Some of the latest nVidia drivers seem to have a fan bug, make sure your fan isn't stuck at anything lower than 100%. I wouldn't raise the PCI-e since atleast my SATA drives doesn't work over 100MHz. I stressed my system for about 22 hours, if anything was wrong (CPU,MEM..) it would probably have shown.

drwho

I just finished upgrading my system to Vista Ultimate 64-bit this weekend and after getting everything installed this afternoon, decided to load one of my games back and get some playing time in. Twice now I've gotten this nvddmkm.sys error. The first time I got a BSOD and the second the game just crashed back to the desktop with the nvddmkm.sys error showing.


How does one go about reseting the PCI-Express Speeds? Is it in the Bios?

Tipstaff

Just out of curiosity, but for those having the issue, do you have UAC turned on or off?

In any case, this issue is just one of those things that nobody can seem to find "the" solution to, or "the" cause for. I've seen people fix or sort of fix it by replacing the card, changing the motherboard, sometimes with a different brand, upping or decreasing the PCIE bus speed, changing their ram or ram timings, using a specific driver set, using a different chipset driver, finding out that Vista installed an older nvlddmkm.sys file, and by replacing it with the one in the driver set they installed fixed the issue, and so on, and so on. All sorts of fixes, but not one definitive "this is the problem" answer, or "this is how you fix it" answer. The oddest thing is that the situation is all over the place. It can occur during install, after install, Vista can work fine for weeks then all of a sudden BSOD with this error, it can happen when running an SLI setup or single card, and it can happen when playing games to watching DVDs, or even running Vista Aero can cause it. AND I've seen reports of it happening on ATI systems too, sometimes tied with the nvlddmkm.sys file which doesn't make any sense unless it was left there from that person switching to ATI from Nvidia, but more often than not the atikmdag.sys file will be the culprit.

At one point I remember Microsoft admitting it was their fault, something about it being related to DirectX 10 code or some such, and it was 2 months later that a couple graphic hotfixes came out for Vista. Unfortunately the issue still occurs.

ViRuS2k

I have also had loads of reports that the beta nvidia 174.xx line dont seem to BSOD with this .sys error.

give it a try.

174.31 seems very stable for me....

drwho

ViRuS2k, could you please give me directions on how to reduce the memory clock on my graphics card by 20 mhz.


One other question, for you, isn't the 174.31 drivers for the 9000 series of graphics cards by Nvidia?

CDsDontBurn

drwho,
you can use rivatuner to overclock/underclock your video card.

modifying the *.inf file will make it to support the 8x00 series cards.

selltekk

I have been having these issues for a few weeks now as well. I don't think myu fan is stuck at a low setting, but I used NTune to crank it to 100% and dial back the GPU and RAM speeds by 50Mhz while I game because that is the only time I have any issues. I'm going to try the 177.x forceware and hope that solves the issue.

Mostly the I get the nvlddmkm.sys problem when I try to alt-tab out of a game.

selltekk

Also, when I switch to DX9 from DX10, I get full crashes (spontaneous reboot) rather than in DX10 mode where the screen goes black but then recovers about 10 seconds later.

nohbody

I just started experiencing problems with thenvlddmkm.sys after updating updating to the latest whql drivers running vista64 and a 8800GTX. I tried to roll back the drivers and I still am experiencing this problem.

D_ToXx

+1(but the 8800 ultra)

underclock: 638->600mhz other(older) drivers everything,more volt's,enz..
I have send my'n cart back to EVGA en bought a new power supply(zalman ZM850-HP)

nothing works.... is it a heat problem? 20 min playing cod and crash,restart and 5 min crash,restart 4 min...

help!

blibbax

I find that running RAM and CPU at stock speed and latency always cures this problem.

CDsDontBurn

get the EVGA Precision utility to monitor your video card's temperature under idle and load. you can also use it to monitor your FPS and use it to underclock/overclock the video card as well. These 8800GTXs can reach 100C before the card begins to experience thermal failure.

I found that to be the case as well. But what if you have memory that is overclocked, like DDR2 1066 or DDR3 1800? clocking down the memory isn't the solution, it's a work around. but, if you don't care about a drop in FPS and just want the system to be stable, then by all means, go for it

blibbax

This is very true. Howver, I find that just pulling back your memory overclock slightly has a big impact on stability with a minimal impact on FPS.

D_ToXx

trie'd yesterday: bios update grafic, remove everything from nvidia with driver cleaner pro in safe modus. installed the nvidia drivers and nope...

today:EVGA precision downl. at 78 degrees celcius a nvlddmkm crash(10min) restart, and at 73 degrees BSOD after 5 min(GPU temp.) restart,
I've put the biggest fan in the house (50cm) in the computer and a nvlddmkm
crash after something like 5min..

so it's not a heating problem? I've litte bit clocked the E6850 to a 3800mhz.
but I have the crash still after several reïnstallation's everthing orginal.