FIX: nvlddmkm.sys has stopped responding and has recovered [VISTA ERROR]

[brucewayne]

yep.. real bad! Now i happen to read an article on SMPS... i din know that the power output of the SMPS module deteriorates over a period of time! i am not quite sure if its a good brand. Its definitely not Corsair or coolermaster

So which means, there cud be a chance that when my system had only 1x80GB IDE + 8600GT, the power usage was not so high from the 400W unit.. later addition of 300GB SATA meant, the usage went a bit higher... all was fine for a year almost and suddenly NVL appeared.. used to happen when playing games (on xp or vista)... for some time underclocking GPU helped.. but funny thing is, even without underclocking NFS-Carbon played like a dream!!!

So i feel, usually these SMPS units deliver less than spec power.. so maybe it was giving say 320W initially and over some time, it fell to much less... now an addition of a 500GB SATA + 2xDVD writers might be killing it!

So i'm going for a 700W unit right away

Ended up spending 65Eu on a 700W SMPS... first thing i do is put back the video card, run the system without stressing the card with any gaming! After 1 day, i start off with my first game... and there it hangs again! ****! this is really annoying.. i seriously feel the card has had its day! i shud have tried with a different mobo i feel... what a waste of money on a new SMPS then!

 

[Areal Person]

FIX: nvlddmkm.sys 116 (TDR error)

OK,

I’ve found a correct solution to the nvlddmkm.sys 116 (The TDR error)
(at least for my specific hardware setup)

The nvlddmkm.sys 116 error is the Timeout Detection and Recovery function.
It is a feature of the DirectX graphics kernel subsystem (dxgkrnl.sys)

The symptoms of the error I was getting are the following…

While playing a game, the card would stop responding and either exit with
A BSOD and reboot, or it would crash to the desktop showing the nvlddmkm.sys 116 error as the reason. I tried everything, I even did an RMA on my card and it still
would do this !

How I correctly fixed mine. Here are my system specs.

*----------------------------
Vista x32 Ultimate SP1
ASUS P6T Deluxe OC Palm Edition MB
Intel i7-920 Quad Core CPU
6gb Corsair XMS PC1066 DDR3 1333MHz (6x1024) RAM (all installed))
BFG GeForce GTX 285 OC2 1GB PCIe w/Dual Link DVI VIDEO
Antec TruePower Quattro 850Watt ...(Yellow racing strips )
Seagate Barracuda 160gb 7200 RPM SATA HD
*----------------------------

The Fix, I did this.

1) Downloaded nVidia nTune and installed it.
2) Select the Adjust GPU Settings under the Performance area.

PLEASE NOTE: I have a single GTX 285 OC2 card, your adjustments
may be different for a different card type.


3) Change “GPU clock settings:” to “Custom clock frequencies”
4) Set Core bus: = 605mhz
5) Set Memory bus: = 1007 mhz
6) ACCEPT the changes


Now, the following may not be required, but I did it on my system
Because if I ever do get the error it helps my system recover better.

Under HKLM/system/CurrentControlSet/Control/GraphicsDriver/DCI
Set and/or create the following as needed.
TdrDdiDelay = 14 (Hex)
TdrDelay = 14 (Hex)
Timeout = 14 (Hex)

As I said, you may not need these at all ! But they helped me.

Make sure you check these settings in nTune before playing each game
as it switches them back to the bad values on my system after a reboot.

That’s it ! 100% fixed.

It looks like this 285 card is factory overclocked to high, and is unstable out of the box!

I’ve only tested this on my specific hardware, it works for me, I hope it will
work for you.

Good Luck !
Areal Person

 

[deathman20]

Well since I've been back on the nV bandwagon for a few months now. They seemed to fix at least to me the issues for this on my system since I haven't had it since.

Running Vista Ultimate 64-bit.

 

[Areal Person]

@deathmatch20

What are your core bus & memory bus settings on the GTX 285?
Also, how are you managing to keep the GPU temps so cool ?

I sometimes run my fan at 75% for better cooling, but will that
not wear it out soon ?

Thanks,
-Areal

 

[deathman20]

@deathmatch20

What are your core bus & memory bus settings on the GTX 285?
Also, how are you managing to keep the GPU temps so cool ?

I sometimes run my fan at 75% for better cooling, but will that
not wear it out soon ?

Thanks,
-Areal

First Welcome To Da Forum


Second all info is in my sig...
702/1584/1404 -- 36C Idle / 68C Load

My fan I run at 65% all the time. It might wear out sooner, but its right to the point of not bad for noise/cooling performance. Fans are designed to run a long time so really its not much of a concern to me, or anyone else that buys it from me for a long time.

While the load temps where taking back in Feb/March when it was cooler by me, even now 72-74C load playing games when its 6C warmer in the room isn't bad, rises as temps rise.

 

[Ceres87]

Hey all I have the same problem with the nvlddmkm.sys file not responding and recovering.

I am running Windows Vista x64, I have a BFG GeForce GTX 285 graphics card (1024MB GDDR3). I have a self-built machine, I am using Asus P6T Deluxe mobo w/ an Intel Core i7 Quad Core (X58 chipset). I run tri-channel corsair 6G RAM which is why I'm using x64 Vista.

Now this error does not appear often. Up until today it only happened when I played Counter-Strike 1.6. If I played CSS or L4D or CoD:W@W everything was fine.

Yesterday I insalled some older games onto my rig. These two games are The Elder Scroll III: Morrowind w/ Tribunal and Bloodmoon expansions, and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion w/ The Knights of The Nine patch set and the Shivering Isles expansion.

Oddly Morrowind ran fine but when I ran Oblivion I got about 2 minutes into creating my character and it locked up for a second and my screen went black and Windows Solutions started scanning for a solution to the nvlddmkm.sys error. I tried updating drivers for my power usage, I also triple checked that i had the latest driver from nVidia which I do it's like 185.65 or whatever.


Anyways I've read through some of this thread starting from back in 2007 and i jumped up here hoping something had been resolved in the past 2 years... well I registered because I would love to try this fix but would also enjoy getting specific instructions for my rig and files and all that stuff Jen was talking about.

@ Jen: I am new to these forums and I am not sure how to PM you. I went to your profile and the only thing I saw there was so send you an e-mail which it would not let me. I would like to send you a list of my nv_directories and have you so kindly make me a set of specific instructions.

Again this problem was not a huge issue until I started Oblivion and I can't play it for more that a few minutes.

Thanks for any help you send my way, hopefully you're all still around and Jen will get back to me soon

Regards,
Ceres87

 

[Ray Sheppard]

I did manage to get rid of the 'nvlddmkm.sys file not responding' error, some months ago using JB's method of cleaning out the nv_directories but that was after replacing every piece of hardware looking for the fault. I run the latest 185.85 drivers with Vista 64-BIT and just recently updated to Vista SP2 and thought the new update may have found a solution to the error?

Ray

 

[Ceres87]

I was hoping that SP2 would have the solution too but alas this problem with Oblivion occured after I installed SP2...

I figured out how to PM and I have sent JB a PM, no reply yet though. Is the first post she made still the best one to follow?

 

[Ray Sheppard]

Her first post was the one I followed to 'fix' my problem but I did find it a little hard to follow but got there in the end. If you look toward the bottom of the page on the link below, The Red has a post that makes it all a bit easier to understand.

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=518749&page=8

Ray

 

[Ceres87]

Thanks Ray. I got tired of waiting for JB to reply or even read my PM... I guess she's not active for the time being. Anyways, I followed the first post with the method you pointed me towards from The Red and it didn't do squat.

I started thinking about anything else that happened when I first started seeing this error while playing CS. I remembered something about it whinning about the Vista Aero theme... so I set my theme back from Aero to Basic and I was able to play oblivion for about an hour before going to bed. Today I played for about the same amount of time, maybe longer, however, the crash did happen again and when I started it up again I played for about another 20 minutes before it happened again... now I'm starting to think it's a cooling issue and possibly my card is slowly overheating... it is a BFG GTX Geforce 285 OCX (OCX meaning it is factory overclocked to the highest it can be for an air-cooled g-card).

Does anyone know of a good peice of free software to monitor heat of the video card. I searched and all I could find were ones that showed that for the cpu and mobo and fan speeds and voltage...nothing for video cards. I also looked for some kind of setting that i read about nVidea having built it to look at it but I never found it. Any help would be muchly appretiated

 

[Ray Sheppard]

I did read, somewhere in this 15 page thread, that JB can only spare the time on a Friday to reply tp PM's.

I use EVGA Precision for adjusting the fan speed and I'm certain it will work on non EVGA cards. You may have to sign up as a member of the forum to download it -

http://www.evga.com/precision/

It's written by the same guy who designed RivaTuner but full 185.85 driver compatibility is not available 'till the next update of RivaTuner, later this month but the fan speed facility still works. Download RivaTuner -

http://downloads.guru3d.com/RivaTuner-v2.24-download-163.html

Ray
EDIT...some folk have underclocked their cards and cured the error so it may be heat related.

 

[Jimmy Decay]

Well, what can I say, except that I'm in the same boat

I just recently bought a new laptop, specifically for gaming. It's a Gateway FX P-7805u, which came with Vista-64 and a nvidia GeForce 9800m gts video card with 1 gig dedicated memory.

I installed WoW, then the beta for Aion, and a wireless modem adaptor for when I'm at work. Needless to say, less than a week out of the box, I started getting these errors. The kicker is, my girlfriend's computer, which si exactly the same, has not done this.

I've tried just about everything I could find, and have just recently tried Jen's most recent instructions, but am now having issues with my wireless modem >.<

Hopefully, I can get that up and running so I can attempt to play WoW again, and see if the problem persists.

Oh, and I dl'ed nTune, and that just gave me the BSOD whenever I attempted to run it....

Jimmy

 

[Jimmy Decay]

Okay, update time.

Several days later, I've gone through and installed all my drivers. I wrestled with Vista in regards to drivers for my gc89 wireless card for mobile broadband, had to force ownership of some files to get that taken care of, but that's another story.

Everything seemed to be running fine, I was running WoW and WAR concurrently, and even played WoW at work for several hours with no problems whatsoever.

Then, came raid night. We were all running through Naxx, and I noticed that I would get some freezes. Split second and all that, not a big deal. Well, then it locked up.

Great, I was so angry. So, so angry. I figured I'd give it tonight to figure something out, or back to Best Buy it goes.

So, hours of research, and still no dice. I dl'ed the nvidia system utility, and can now change the clocking on my card. they were set to factory 600/799/1500. I dropped them a tad, but that made things choppy, so I put them back. Then I read some stuff about how the gpu would be automatically downclocked during times of less activity, in order to save on battery life or some such nonesense.

So, I checked the registry files, to no avail. The power setting entries just weren't there. This is the thread I was reading on - http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=261929

So, I dl'ed PowerMizer Switch here - http://www.box.net/shared/v7jpoateoq and have turned off the powermizer while on a/c. I'm running gpu-z right now, and it seems that everything is running at the same speed, without downclocking. Hopefully this will resolve the problem.

I'll let you know in a few days.

 

[brucewayne]

Okay, update time.


So, hours of research, and still no dice. I dl'ed the nvidia system utility, and can now change the clocking on my card. they were set to factory 600/799/1500. I dropped them a tad, but that made things choppy, so I put them back. Then I read some stuff about how the gpu would be automatically downclocked during times of less activity, in order to save on battery life or some such nonesense.

I'll let you know in a few days.

I was a bit silent for a few weeks coz i was waiting to post here saying "yes its now working fine!". Again i repeat.. i am getting this error on win xp pro with SP2.

i tried all downclocking n stuff.. even fixed a new 700W SMPS but in vain!

Recently i once again tried underclocking my 8600GT using riva tuner to half its potential figures and saved it as default for every system restart.

After a real long time, i cud all of a sudden run GT Legends game borrowed from a friend!! But somehow i found my system running a bit slow... and at times it did freeze when i ran multiple programs! This was not the case for past 8-9 months. I cudnt run a single game and now all of a sudden i cud!


And everytime before running a game i wud go to rivatuner and adjust the fan duty cycle manually to 100% from 25%. click apply. Then on rivatune monitor screen i cud see that fan duty cycle changes from 75% to 0%! Then i set the contol to "automatic" and click apply. Then the fan duty cycle becomes 100%. After this i play games... and every single game works fine.

At times, though there are artifacts. But i do an Alt+Tab go back to desktop and switch back the game and its all perfect!

Then i noticed that the system properties show my RAM as 1GB when i have 2x 1GB! Then i realized one of the 1GB stick has not seated properly after my recent clean up!

Then i corrected it and now it has 2GB RAM... all was fine for 2-3 days and all of a sudden now it hangs even when underclocked! it freezes and i cant do Alt+Tab either

So am back to my old state!

Now i am wondering it this is a RAM issue ? Coz i remember someone saying that there are problems with the ASUS M2NMXSE board has some issues with RAM slot (the one closer to the processor)!!! Maybe i must buy a 2GB or 4GB single stick and see if its ok.

Again my mobo in BIOS shows RAM clock speed as 333MHz instead of 667MHz!

 

[JenBell]

Hello peoples...was locked away from my english speaking world as I was working in Osaka (cute men), Tokyo (so awesome...I even met Daigo...yes the SF4 one...he is soooo cute...wish I could bring him back with me...I promised to let him have his own SF4 arcade next the bed and he just started laughing) and finally back home^__^

I'll be editing of dposting and respond to all the PMs tomorrow Wed's 24thJune09...and anything in the thread while I've been away, apologies for not keeping the thread alive but will do from now on.

EDIT: Apologies people...taking me longer than expected to reply to all the PMs. Will have them all done ASAP...sry

 

[brucewayne]

Hello peoples...was locked away from my english speaking world as I was working in Osaka (cute men), Tokyo (so awesome...I even met Daigo...yes the SF4 one...he is soooo cute...wish I could bring him back with me...I promised to let him have his own SF4 arcade next the bed and he just started laughing) and finally back home^__^

I'll be editing of dposting and respond to all the PMs tomorrow Wed's 24thJune09...and anything in the thread while I've been away, apologies for not keeping the thread alive but will do from now on.

Welcome back to the "english speaking world", pretty lady

Just a minor update from my side after the previous post, my system is NOW running absoluetly stable so far after i removed the 1GB memory stick from the slot closer to the CPU!! no freeze, no error... ya system tasks a bit slow coz its now a 1GB rig instead of 2GB.

Next step planing to get a single 2GB/4GB stick... or perhaps change the motherboard...

I am almost convinced the video card is fine coz all games play very well in almost any graphics settings... no matter i enable/disable AI or vertical sync or whatever...

till now din have the guts to try setting GPU clock to default n check if error reccurs... am happy as of now coz i can at least play most games that i have... was planning to sell off all my PC games to ppl

What i have done in gist :-

1. underclock my GPU by 75% approx. (din work after a while)
2. edit registry to change the TDR duration to 14hex from 7hex (as mentioned in this post) - dont think this had any effect
3. most imp!!- removed 1GB mem stick from the slot closer to CPU

Above combo has been working for past 3-4 days. RAM clock speed still showing as 333MHz in BIOS

i've read many reviews which claim my ASUS M2N MX-SE motherboard is a problematic one

Also can someone tell me how many pins does my AMD 64X2 4000+ processor have ? 939 ?? are there any new good motherboards compatible with this old processor ?? i think its pointless investing on faster processors for my day-to-day use or gaming... my old 2GHz AMD rig feels as fast as my 4GHz dual core

 

[silencer51]

Well this problem has left me stumped to the point I can't do almost anything with my PC. Not even watch a movie without the damn error appearing.

I get it even with normal Windows usage (I have Aero turned on), I get it on the screensaver, and I can't play ANY game whatsoever without it crashing back to the desktop
either at launch or after a few minutes.

I have tried all drivers since 182.05 (I'm now using 190.15 betas), thankfully the new drivers just crash back to the desktop, with the older 182 series the monitor just loses the signal and the computer restarts.

I have used Furmark to stress test my card, its a GTX 295 and yes it runs very hot but I can't get it to crash in Furmark's stress test... So I know for a fact that heat is not the problem.

What could the problem be? I have tried, literally, everything.

 

[silencer51]

I tried some older drivers too (181.22, 182.51) and they both crash instantly with most games.

What I've noticed is that 182 series drivers cause the monitor to lose signal and then the pc restarts, while newer drivers like the 186.18 on nvidia's website just cause the game to crash back to the desktop and the dreaded error to appear as a popup notification.

I've tried everything short of RMA'ing the card. Any suggestions?

 

[Ray Sheppard]

In my case, I replaced every piece of hardware in the system and the problem still remained. Tried many different Nvidia drivers, using driver cleaner to remove the leftover Nvidia files after uninstalling from the O/S program uninstall section and still my system crashed.

This link will take you to a post for my eventual cure and some months later I'm still error free. 'The Red' poster's method (a simplified version of JenBell's) worked for me. I was on the point of format/reinstall so had nothing to lose. Link -

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=518749&page=8

Ray

 

[brucewayne]

In my case, I replaced every piece of
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=518749&page=8

Ray

Adding to my prevoius post... my system runs error free sucessfully for past 3 weeks! played Crysis sucessfully yesterday for hours together with no error or BSOD

OMG! think of it... its been a year since i last played Crysis thanks to tis damn error!

So i guess its a memory issue or the memory slot issue... still has that one mem slot vacant.. am sure.. the day i fit the other 1GB RAM into that slot, i'l get the error.

But i'm surprised if ppl change all their hardware n still get this error!! coz its as good as getting the error on a brand new rig!!