Nvidia Display Driver Has Stopped Responding and Successfully Recovered - Fault!

[moncomp]

Hey Guys

I've been through pretty much "all" of the forums regarding this issue and I am yet to see any vendor fix it. I am not 100% sure if it's a Microsoft, nVidia or PCI-E chipset issue.
I've been building systems for 15yrs so I feel i'm not a complete novice.

Recently I have built 3x x58 Core i7 systems for clients which all exhibit the same issue "Nvidia Display Driver Has Stopped Responding and Successfully Recovered".
I have used gigabyte and asus x58 motherboards , generic and corsair memory, antec and gigabyte psu's, asus/samsung/lg monitors, seagate/wd/corsair hard drives. I've basically changed all hardware with something else and ruled all that gear out by process of elimination.
The only thing in common is Windows 7 64bit.

What I'm down to now is the video cards. Whenever I use G210 or g2xx series cards I get the issue. I also get the issue with Quadro Q600 cards.

I chucked in an old Geforce 6600 and that seems fine. I am currently also testing the g430 cards in a system and will try a G460 next. I have heard people are also getting this issue with ATI cards though I have not tested any yet.

I have tried as many recommended fixes from various forums as I could find: driver revisions and cleaning, tdr timing, power settings, underclocking etc etc etc none are working effectively.
If you suggest another one I'll let you know if I've tried it already.

Thus I think the issue is either a Microsoft Windows fault an nVidia driver fault or a PCI-E chipset fault. Interestingly I have not heard of anyone having the issue running an AMD rig.

So my question is does anyone actually know where the problem is stemming from and when there will be a fix for it?

[Dark Mantis]

Hi

All I can say is that I haven't noticed anyone complaining of this with a AMD card as you were inferring. There have been numerous cases with nVidia.

If you want to prove/disprove the Windows idea why not run it with a Linux live disk ?

[moncomp]

Hey Dark Mantis

I can definately do that. I've been thinking though, if this was a Microsoft issue wouldn't this be happening on a lot more systems and in particular AMD rigs too. So based off that assumption I think this is an nVidia hardware/driver issue.. ... .

[Dark Mantis]

Yes I would tend to agree and think that is far more likely, but only testing will tell for sure.

[paincakes]

I think "Display driver atikmdag stopped responding and has successfully recovered" is the AMD/ATI version of the same crash. I've been having the Nvidia crash on w7 x64 with a 9800GT and wanted to move to an AMD card for escape but I think they are in the same boat as well. Windows Vista suffers from this too.

[Dark Mantis]

In that case it would seem to point to a motherboard/BIOS fault. Try contacting GGTS about it and see what they say. You might have to RMA the board.

Just enter your email address and click on the language of choice.
GGTS   http://ggts.gigabyte.com/

[moncomp]

its definately not the board because i've tried a 2nd ga-x58-usb3 and i've also tried an asus x58 board

[Dark Mantis]

I have just been testing my AMD 6970 and can recreate the error on that but only when using Furmark. So far I can't work out if it is a driver issue or program problem because it is the only thing I can find that replicates it.

[moncomp]

Well i can confirm it's not a driver issue or a hardware issue.

I just built an old Core2Duo system with Windows 7 64bit and i get the same driver display error with the G210 card in.

Looks like this card doesn't support Windows 7, even though the nVidia website says so.

[Dark Mantis]

I find that hard to believe as there are so many of these cards around and a lot of them must be running on Windows 7 systems without this problem.

[paincakes]

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg487368

Windows reloads your graphics card driver if it thinks it hasn't responded to the system within two seconds. You can adjust the timeout threshold of the recovery procedure or disable this feature all together. I added the "TdrLevelOff" value 0 to my registry to disable it. If you experience freezes or blue screen errors after adding the key then Windows was resetting the driver for a legitimate reason. When adding the key it is case sensitive.

"The TDR-related registry keys are located under HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers.
TdrLevel: REG_DWORD. The initial level of recovery. The possible values are:

TdrLevelOff (0). – Detection disabled.

TdrLevelBugcheck (1) – Bug check on detected timeout, for example, no recovery.

TdrLevelRecoverVGA (2) – Recover to VGA (not implemented).

TdrLevelRecover(3) – Recover on timeout. This is the default value.

TdrDelay: REG_DWORD. The number of seconds that the GPU is allowed to delay the preempt request from the scheduler. This is effectively the timeout threshold. The default value is 2.

TdrDdiDelay: REG_DWORD. The number of seconds that the operating system allows threads to leave the driver. After a specified time, the operating system bug checks the system with the code VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE (0x116). The default value is 5.

TdrTestMode: REG_DWORD: Internal test usage.

TdrDebugMode: REG_DWORD: The debugging-related behavior of the TDR process.

TDR_DEBUG_MODE_OFF (0) breaks to kernel debugger before the recovery to allow investigation of the timeout.

TDR_DEBUG_MODE_IGNORE_TIMEOUT (1) ignores any timeout.

TDR_DEBUG_MODE_RECOVER_NO_PROMPT (2) recovers without break into the debugger. This is the default value.

TDR_DEBUG_MODE_RECOVER_UNCONDITIONAL (3) recovers even if some recovery conditions are not met (for example, recovers on consecutive timeouts).

TdrLimitTime: REG_DWORD (Windows Vista SP1 and later versions only): The default time within which a "TdrLimitCount" number of TDRs are allowed without crashing the system.

TdrLimitCount: REG_DWORD (Windows Vista SP1 and later versions only): The default number of TDRs (0x117) that are allowed in "TdrLimitTime" without crashing the system."

[Plutotype]

Hi,
With ATI 5670 Cat 11.2, I use to experience this with flash videos. Disabling hardware acceleration in adobe settings(right click) fixed it.
Pluto

[paincakes]

In regards to my above post I believe the correct reg key to add would be "TdrLevel 0" in order to disable the timeout checks.

[GoodBytes]

To me it sounds like a driver issue:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-64bit-270.51-beta-driver.html

Important note:
 -> Uninstall the old drivers first, restart your computer
 -> Select Custom install
 -> Check the box for Clean install
 -> Uncheck  the 3D drivers
 -> Once done, restart.

[Dark Mantis]

It is always a good idea to make sure that issues such as this are not driver related and so GoodBytes offers sound advice there.