nvlddmkm.dll stopped responding

mac_angel · Jun 16, 2009, 02:59 PM

okay, I used to get this all the time before when I was playing Crysis, Crysis Warhead, and Far Cry 2. Pretty well any game that really pushes my system. I've googled the thing and I find TONNES of hits with people having the same problem, but no cure. Figured if I'm gonna post the question myself that I'd go to the source.
I've now got 2 GTX 280 graphics cards in SLI and I wanted to go back and play those games again, and again, I'm getting the errors. The game will freeze, crash to desktop a minute later, and that little error message would be in the bottom corner. Obviously I've tried it with different drivers since I update the drivers every time they come out. I've even tried reformatting and trying Vista Ultimate 64 as well as Windows Server 2008 64. Any ideas how to get this fixed?

System

E8400 OC'd to 3.83GHz (yes, I've gotten the error when I'm not overclocked)
EVGA i780 mobo
2 x 2GB OCZ Reaper RAM. Link and Sync to 850MHz (it's PC 8000 so that's underclocked)
2 x BFG GTX 280 1GB cards. One is OCX, the other is just OC. (I know that they will both clock to match the slower card)
3 x Seagate 500GB hard drives in RAID 5
tonnes of 12cm fans all around my case.

This last time that I got the message I was trying to run 3D Mark Vantage. It only made it 5 frames into the thing before it crashed so it's not even able to overhead I'd think.

cozumel · Jun 16, 2009, 04:33 PM

Hi,

This thread in DriverHeaven has many posts referring to the same file causing the same problem but without any definite dolution. I know it is an ATI thread but in many cases the same problem with the same file. Over 100 pages (1500 posts) have been made in the one thread!!! Happy reading! There maybe something in there you find useful.

Sorry I could not be of any real help.

Good luck!

mac_angel · Jun 16, 2009, 10:49 PM

anyone know if Windows 7 has this problem?

CDsDontBurn · Jun 17, 2009, 02:14 AM

alright, seeing that you've already tried many different driver versions and even reinstalled your OS a couple of times, imna say it's going to be a hardware fault with one or perhaps both of your cards (possible but not likely). An even less likely possibility, is that it could be related somehow to the MoBo's northbridge when it is processing data between the gfx cards and the CPU.

since you have two cards, i'd say that you physically test both cards out. and yes, that means you have to physically pull one card out of your machine and just run with one card at a time. when doing this, you want to play the same games or benchmarks you normally would do with both cards and see if you can replicate the error. if you can't do it with the first card, then do this same thing all over with the second card and see what happens. if one card does it and the other one doesn't, then that tells you which card you have that is bad. if both cards give you the nvlddmkm.sys error, then i'd suggest you try yet a 3rd NVIDIA based card in your machine, or perhaps your cards in another machine to see if it is something else with your machine or if it is indeed both of your cards that are causing this, like the motherboard.

as for the w7 question, i can't say for sure that i've seen this specific error with w7. however, i'm going to presume that the answer to your question is yes simply because w7 is based off of Vista. so, many of the core components are the same in vista as they are in w7.

mac_angel · Jun 17, 2009, 10:44 AM

okay, I'll try out the two cards seperately when I get a chance. The one GTX280 is brand new. And, as I said, I've been having this problem for over a year. So that's many different graphics cards, many different OS installs and 3 different motherboards. The only thing that I could think of that's the same is the RAM. I even got a new power supply (antec TruPower Quattro 850W - my PC Power caught on fire a few weeks ago. Not sparked or smoked, but caught on fire).
Anyways, yea, only thing that has remained the same is the RAM, and I've ran MEMTEST on it so many times it's not funny.

CDsDontBurn · Jun 17, 2009, 03:47 PM

oh, i've also read on other forums that some people were able to temporarily solve this by bringing their memory speeds down a notch. like, if they had 1066Mhz RAM, they would bring it down to 800Mhz and the nvlddmkm.sys propblem would go away. it didn't always work though. sometimes it would go away for a little while, or it would come back way later, or wouldn't come back at all. it's just something else to try out.

mac_angel · Jun 17, 2009, 04:30 PM

yea, but if you look at my origional post though, mine's already underclocked to I could link/synch. It's PC8000 (DDR1000) underclocked to 850. I guess I could try loosening up the timings on them and see how that works.

CDsDontBurn · Jun 18, 2009, 04:19 AM

ahh, gotcha. yea man. aside from the RAM thing, going even lower i mean, the only other thing i can suggest to you is to perhaps try winXP for testing purposes. the equivalent error you should be getting in winXP to this nvlddmkm.sys in vista, would be nv4_disp.sys BSOD.

but, that's a bit too brash to try. just try the one gfx card at a time thing. you said you went from a single card to SLIed set up recently. so, try your new card just by itself as the primary card.

other than that, idk atm.

mac_angel · Jun 18, 2009, 10:42 PM

okay, the new drivers came out and I installed them. I also installed the EVGA Precision 1.71. I turned the fans on full and ran 3D Mark Vantage and played Far Cry 2 for a while and had no problems so far. Going to play some more Far Cry 2 now, actually. I'm not sure if it's the new drivers for the fan controller, but it's working - so far.

CDsDontBurn · Jun 18, 2009, 10:56 PM

hopefully it stays working for you.

mac_angel · Jun 19, 2009, 12:36 AM

yup, just played for about 2 hours and no problems other than getting my ass kicked on hard core mode

CDsDontBurn · Jun 19, 2009, 07:00 AM

lol, well that's something i can't help you on

Jun 16, 2009, 02:59 PM	#1
mac_angel DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 26 Rep Power: 0	nvlddmkm.dll stopped responding okay, I used to get this all the time before when I was playing Crysis, Crysis Warhead, and Far Cry 2. Pretty well any game that really pushes my system. I've googled the thing and I find TONNES of hits with people having the same problem, but no cure. Figured if I'm gonna post the question myself that I'd go to the source. I've now got 2 GTX 280 graphics cards in SLI and I wanted to go back and play those games again, and again, I'm getting the errors. The game will freeze, crash to desktop a minute later, and that little error message would be in the bottom corner. Obviously I've tried it with different drivers since I update the drivers every time they come out. I've even tried reformatting and trying Vista Ultimate 64 as well as Windows Server 2008 64. Any ideas how to get this fixed? System E8400 OC'd to 3.83GHz (yes, I've gotten the error when I'm not overclocked) EVGA i780 mobo 2 x 2GB OCZ Reaper RAM. Link and Sync to 850MHz (it's PC 8000 so that's underclocked) 2 x BFG GTX 280 1GB cards. One is OCX, the other is just OC. (I know that they will both clock to match the slower card) 3 x Seagate 500GB hard drives in RAID 5 tonnes of 12cm fans all around my case. This last time that I got the message I was trying to run 3D Mark Vantage. It only made it 5 frames into the thing before it crashed so it's not even able to overhead I'd think. __________________ Vista Ultimate 64 XPS M1710. - Core Duo T7600G @ 2.83Ghz. 4GB DDR2-667, Hitachi SATA 200GB 16MB Cache 7200rpm, 512MB Geforce Go 7950 GTX @ 660 core/ 760 mem, Matshita Blue-Ray burner, Dell Wireless 1500 Draft-N, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR tech. Zalman ZM-NC1000 notebook cooler (makes a HUGE difference) Shin Etsu X23-7783D thermal paste (blueskybasin@gmail.com - mention where you got his e-mail)

Jun 16, 2009, 04:33 PM	#2
cozumel I'm dangerous but cute... Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Under the waves... Posts: 3,619 Rep Power: 42 System Specs	Re: nvlddmkm.dll stopped responding Hi, This thread in DriverHeaven has many posts referring to the same file causing the same problem but without any definite dolution. I know it is an ATI thread but in many cases the same problem with the same file. Over 100 pages (1500 posts) have been made in the one thread!!! Happy reading! There maybe something in there you find useful. Sorry I could not be of any real help. Good luck! __________________ Don't worry about money - Be a beach bum! Scuba Rocks

Jun 16, 2009, 10:49 PM	#3
mac_angel DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 26 Rep Power: 0	Re: nvlddmkm.dll stopped responding anyone know if Windows 7 has this problem? __________________ Vista Ultimate 64 XPS M1710. - Core Duo T7600G @ 2.83Ghz. 4GB DDR2-667, Hitachi SATA 200GB 16MB Cache 7200rpm, 512MB Geforce Go 7950 GTX @ 660 core/ 760 mem, Matshita Blue-Ray burner, Dell Wireless 1500 Draft-N, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR tech. Zalman ZM-NC1000 notebook cooler (makes a HUGE difference) Shin Etsu X23-7783D thermal paste (blueskybasin@gmail.com - mention where you got his e-mail)

Jun 17, 2009, 02:14 AM	#4
CDsDontBurn 127.0.0.1 Join Date: May 2003 Location: Southern California Posts: 21,849 Rep Power: 133 System Specs	Re: nvlddmkm.dll stopped responding alright, seeing that you've already tried many different driver versions and even reinstalled your OS a couple of times, imna say it's going to be a hardware fault with one or perhaps both of your cards (possible but not likely). An even less likely possibility, is that it could be related somehow to the MoBo's northbridge when it is processing data between the gfx cards and the CPU. since you have two cards, i'd say that you physically test both cards out. and yes, that means you have to physically pull one card out of your machine and just run with one card at a time. when doing this, you want to play the same games or benchmarks you normally would do with both cards and see if you can replicate the error. if you can't do it with the first card, then do this same thing all over with the second card and see what happens. if one card does it and the other one doesn't, then that tells you which card you have that is bad. if both cards give you the nvlddmkm.sys error, then i'd suggest you try yet a 3rd NVIDIA based card in your machine, or perhaps your cards in another machine to see if it is something else with your machine or if it is indeed both of your cards that are causing this, like the motherboard. as for the w7 question, i can't say for sure that i've seen this specific error with w7. however, i'm going to presume that the answer to your question is yes simply because w7 is based off of Vista. so, many of the core components are the same in vista as they are in w7. __________________ CD's Corner // Her first day // A year later // RX-8 Club 3Dmark06 - 4176 // 3Dmark05 - 7459 // 3Dmark03 - 14289 // PCmark05 - 4453 // PCmark04 - 6297

Jun 17, 2009, 10:44 AM	#5
mac_angel DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 26 Rep Power: 0	Re: nvlddmkm.dll stopped responding okay, I'll try out the two cards seperately when I get a chance. The one GTX280 is brand new. And, as I said, I've been having this problem for over a year. So that's many different graphics cards, many different OS installs and 3 different motherboards. The only thing that I could think of that's the same is the RAM. I even got a new power supply (antec TruPower Quattro 850W - my PC Power caught on fire a few weeks ago. Not sparked or smoked, but caught on fire). Anyways, yea, only thing that has remained the same is the RAM, and I've ran MEMTEST on it so many times it's not funny. __________________ Vista Ultimate 64 XPS M1710. - Core Duo T7600G @ 2.83Ghz. 4GB DDR2-667, Hitachi SATA 200GB 16MB Cache 7200rpm, 512MB Geforce Go 7950 GTX @ 660 core/ 760 mem, Matshita Blue-Ray burner, Dell Wireless 1500 Draft-N, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR tech. Zalman ZM-NC1000 notebook cooler (makes a HUGE difference) Shin Etsu X23-7783D thermal paste (blueskybasin@gmail.com - mention where you got his e-mail)

Jun 17, 2009, 03:47 PM	#6
CDsDontBurn 127.0.0.1 Join Date: May 2003 Location: Southern California Posts: 21,849 Rep Power: 133 System Specs	Re: nvlddmkm.dll stopped responding oh, i've also read on other forums that some people were able to temporarily solve this by bringing their memory speeds down a notch. like, if they had 1066Mhz RAM, they would bring it down to 800Mhz and the nvlddmkm.sys propblem would go away. it didn't always work though. sometimes it would go away for a little while, or it would come back way later, or wouldn't come back at all. it's just something else to try out. __________________ CD's Corner // Her first day // A year later // RX-8 Club 3Dmark06 - 4176 // 3Dmark05 - 7459 // 3Dmark03 - 14289 // PCmark05 - 4453 // PCmark04 - 6297

Jun 17, 2009, 04:30 PM	#7
mac_angel DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 26 Rep Power: 0	Re: nvlddmkm.dll stopped responding yea, but if you look at my origional post though, mine's already underclocked to I could link/synch. It's PC8000 (DDR1000) underclocked to 850. I guess I could try loosening up the timings on them and see how that works. __________________ Vista Ultimate 64 XPS M1710. - Core Duo T7600G @ 2.83Ghz. 4GB DDR2-667, Hitachi SATA 200GB 16MB Cache 7200rpm, 512MB Geforce Go 7950 GTX @ 660 core/ 760 mem, Matshita Blue-Ray burner, Dell Wireless 1500 Draft-N, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR tech. Zalman ZM-NC1000 notebook cooler (makes a HUGE difference) Shin Etsu X23-7783D thermal paste (blueskybasin@gmail.com - mention where you got his e-mail)

Jun 18, 2009, 04:19 AM	#8
CDsDontBurn 127.0.0.1 Join Date: May 2003 Location: Southern California Posts: 21,849 Rep Power: 133 System Specs	Re: nvlddmkm.dll stopped responding ahh, gotcha. yea man. aside from the RAM thing, going even lower i mean, the only other thing i can suggest to you is to perhaps try winXP for testing purposes. the equivalent error you should be getting in winXP to this nvlddmkm.sys in vista, would be nv4_disp.sys BSOD. but, that's a bit too brash to try. just try the one gfx card at a time thing. you said you went from a single card to SLIed set up recently. so, try your new card just by itself as the primary card. other than that, idk atm. __________________ CD's Corner // Her first day // A year later // RX-8 Club 3Dmark06 - 4176 // 3Dmark05 - 7459 // 3Dmark03 - 14289 // PCmark05 - 4453 // PCmark04 - 6297

Jun 18, 2009, 10:42 PM	#9
mac_angel DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 26 Rep Power: 0	Re: nvlddmkm.dll stopped responding okay, the new drivers came out and I installed them. I also installed the EVGA Precision 1.71. I turned the fans on full and ran 3D Mark Vantage and played Far Cry 2 for a while and had no problems so far. Going to play some more Far Cry 2 now, actually. I'm not sure if it's the new drivers for the fan controller, but it's working - so far. __________________ Vista Ultimate 64 XPS M1710. - Core Duo T7600G @ 2.83Ghz. 4GB DDR2-667, Hitachi SATA 200GB 16MB Cache 7200rpm, 512MB Geforce Go 7950 GTX @ 660 core/ 760 mem, Matshita Blue-Ray burner, Dell Wireless 1500 Draft-N, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR tech. Zalman ZM-NC1000 notebook cooler (makes a HUGE difference) Shin Etsu X23-7783D thermal paste (blueskybasin@gmail.com - mention where you got his e-mail)

Jun 18, 2009, 10:56 PM	#10
CDsDontBurn 127.0.0.1 Join Date: May 2003 Location: Southern California Posts: 21,849 Rep Power: 133 System Specs	Re: nvlddmkm.dll stopped responding hopefully it stays working for you. __________________ CD's Corner // Her first day // A year later // RX-8 Club 3Dmark06 - 4176 // 3Dmark05 - 7459 // 3Dmark03 - 14289 // PCmark05 - 4453 // PCmark04 - 6297

Jun 19, 2009, 12:36 AM	#11
mac_angel DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 26 Rep Power: 0	Re: nvlddmkm.dll stopped responding yup, just played for about 2 hours and no problems other than getting my ass kicked on hard core mode __________________ Vista Ultimate 64 XPS M1710. - Core Duo T7600G @ 2.83Ghz. 4GB DDR2-667, Hitachi SATA 200GB 16MB Cache 7200rpm, 512MB Geforce Go 7950 GTX @ 660 core/ 760 mem, Matshita Blue-Ray burner, Dell Wireless 1500 Draft-N, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR tech. Zalman ZM-NC1000 notebook cooler (makes a HUGE difference) Shin Etsu X23-7783D thermal paste (blueskybasin@gmail.com - mention where you got his e-mail)

Jun 19, 2009, 07:00 AM	#12
CDsDontBurn 127.0.0.1 Join Date: May 2003 Location: Southern California Posts: 21,849 Rep Power: 133 System Specs	Re: nvlddmkm.dll stopped responding lol, well that's something i can't help you on __________________ CD's Corner // Her first day // A year later // RX-8 Club 3Dmark06 - 4176 // 3Dmark05 - 7459 // 3Dmark03 - 14289 // PCmark05 - 4453 // PCmark04 - 6297