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

[Surfrider77]

Thanks for the hotfix links, but who are "they" saying it fixes nvlddmkm errors?

nVidia boards dont reflect that... in fact there is a massive influx recently of posters complaining of the error due to Microsoft patching an older driver in its regular updates, which has seemed to kick off a whole other wave of TDR error experiencing customers.

Ironically, one of the nVidia moderators Locked the original nvlddmkm error thread 3 days ago. I personally find this EXTREMELY shady, as this thread has been active since January and was 113 pages long of a history of people biching about the error. Now its "conveniently" locked, yet no fix is in sight.

Pretty poor in my opinion.

 

[JenBell]

I am waiting for the official version of this fix. The fix is extremely flaky to say the least with the version via the link already 'old'.

NV locking the thread is there way of telling people there is a fix coming soon...

As for going back to XP...only crysis could make me do that :-|

Hopefully the fix will be released soon-ish as there are a lot of big games coming out and I dont see MS wanting to sell more copies of XP than vista over this period...the hardest thing to shake off in tech is mainstream conscious...once the average person 'thinks' vista is not stable there opinion will probably never change...its how apple rule the mp3 market...people seem to think only a iPOD can play MP3s...cant blame them though...can u? It works and does its job usually without any problems...MS should get there act sorted out on vista and really start delivering the fix's instead of chucking everything into SP1...I just know MS are holding back fixs for so many things and putting into sp1 because they want it to be the mover that makes everyone move to vista as its 'now stable'...

NV...u gits...can u tell me why my 8800ultra is not 10.1 compliant and why I was not future proofed...also....ati...save us/me...give me a 9800 in its DX10.1 clothes...pretty please with a cherry on top...ooooo...plus whipped cream and honey on my navel ^-^

Peeps...nv gave us nvl to repress the actual crap-ness of the 88series, MS oppressed us because the 360 is being killed by the wii and decided to blame the VistaGeekGamers and ati abandoned us...leaving us in depression...on the bright side of things though...not dead and have something to talk about

 

[SuperDave1685]

You know what makes me mad the most? Have a gander over at nVidia's forums and have a look at their sticky. this is from MARCH!!:

TDRs are not specific to a single driver problem, and can occur for a variety of reasons.

Since the NVIDIA v101.41 beta driver release, NVIDIA has been fixing many TDR issues reported by users. Our software team is currently preparing a new driver which will dramatically reduce the number of TDR errors that users have reported on the forums.

: :


oh oh oh and LOLZ- "pretty please with a cherry on top...ooooo...plus whipped cream and honey on my navel ^-^"

 

[SuperDave1685]

Virtual Addressing Space

Have a look over here at Andantech. This is a good article describing the virtual addressing space limit of 2GB in x86 32-bit applications. It talks about the difference in the XP and Vista Driver model, specifically the Windows Vista Driver Display Model. Very informative and makes this TDR error a tad more understandable.

As one user on the nvida forums said-

"It is a good thing automobiles can not get a TDR! Imagine the guy stalled in front of you for the next three lights, sorry, I have a TDR on my GPS display and now my automobile is not responding!"

 

[Surfrider77]

I am just sick of the whole situation. The nVidia forum has a load of fanboy moderators who want to squash any nVidia ranting for this situation. I have tried to post loads of information and my experience across multiple platforms with this bug. The replies from the "senior members" of that forum are appalling. They go one week talking about lowering RAM to below stock speeds and underclocking various other hardware, to the next week talking about its poor PSUs causing the problem. Last week they had a senior member drag the old thread into 2 pages of "overheating CPU / RAM" causing the problem.

With the recent Microsoft Update, it forced new nVidia drivers for a bunch of users and since then has caused a flood of new people complaining about TDR errors. Why the hell doesnt this ring any bells over at nVidia!?? Driver update = influx of "nvlddmkm.sys" bugged systems! Eventually it was one of these clueless moderators who locked the thread.

I am sick of being told "I need to be patient"... its been 8 fracking MONTHS!!! There is no excuse whatsoever for this. They shipped cards stamped with "Vista ready!" and nothing could be farther from the truth. We have gone almost an entire card lifecycle with no Vista compatibility.

I digress... WinXP all the way for me!

 

[JenBell]

I am gonna test the 163.44 beta drivers for vista32 this week and give them ago. Not holding my breath though. These are the BioShock drivers and I really wanna give the game a go because all the reviews seem to think the game is awesome...plus its meant to have awesome graphics and hammer the gpu senseless with DX10...oooo...comes out here on Friday so will be stopping of at GAME to pick it up as its nearby.

People...let me know how ur testing goes on the 163.44b's - tks

 

[systemhost]

Meh, I hardly ever get this problem... at the most it's when moving WMC to my second screen, then playing with some other windows for awhile... it'll crash, gimmie error, and act like nothing happened. How ever today I was playing Lost Planet and after 2 hours of gaming, it got stuck in a loop. It would crash, reload, crash again, over and over, then darkness, then bsod. Started back up, reported, and started playing again. I'll see, if this problem continues, and nvidia does nothing, then screw it, I'll go back to ati, someone who actually cares about costumers.

 

[Surfrider77]

Meh, I hardly ever get this problem... at the most it's when moving WMC to my second screen, then playing with some other windows for awhile... it'll crash, gimmie error, and act like nothing happened. How ever today I was playing Lost Planet and after 2 hours of gaming, it got stuck in a loop. It would crash, reload, crash again, over and over, then darkness, then bsod. Started back up, reported, and started playing again. I'll see, if this problem continues, and nvidia does nothing, then screw it, I'll go back to ati, someone who actually cares about costumers.

This is whats frustrating about the problem. Some people, like you and me, only get it after hours worth of gaming. Others get it simply by enabling Aero. Its hit and miss on the severity of the problem, but most know how to replicate it on command on their own system. For me, its 1-2 hours of playing games.

Atleast it used to be... been enjoying XP for a couple weeks now.

 

[JenBell]

host...surf...so I installed the 163.44beta's last night and ran CSS in window@ 1920x1200, 3dmark06@ 1920x1200, 2 instances of 1080p content looping with aero enabled, AV+defender running and dream scene playing AdventChildren HD WMV...looped all of them and let it run for best part of six hours and it came through fine. I have not installed the NVL hotfix that was mentioned earlier in the thread. The 2 mini-servicepacks were installed though as they are official.

I had .24 drivers installed which is my homebase effectively and removed the drivers via control panel, restarted, installed drivers without disabling anything and used the expand method to manually replace the NVL file in the system32 folder and sub-folders. Restarted and proceeded to hammer the PC for 6 hours with no problems.

I dont consider the drivers stable until Friday when I have installed BioShock and can play that game. For normal use as in watching avi's, etc and doing the non-gaming stuff the drivers are good enough or stable enough at the moment.

Also...had this weird glitch...when I changed the resolution from 800x600 to max res the whole desktop went into tunnel mode and then flip-3d got stuck in that mode until a simple esc+space+return got me out of it...my mouse was no responding...guess it was a one off but totally killed me for all of 2 mins.

Anyways...peeps...I suggest giving these drivers a go and see what happens. I'll report my BioShock stability on Friday night or something...if it can BShock then I am all kewl with these drivers...if I cant...oh well...360 it is :-|

 

[phavey]

I'll see, if this problem continues, and nvidia does nothing, then screw it, I'll go back to ati, someone who actually cares about costumers.

Hello guys, just to let you know this:

http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&questionID=27116

So, switching to ATI will NOT help!
But feel free to blame that on Nvidia...

 

[systemhost]

Meh, fine, I'll leave the wonderful world of vista... how about that? Geeze, it's like we're paying to be beta testers... We have these multibillion dollar companies all around us and they can't even fix a simple glitch. But yeah, like surf said, I dunno what's worse, constant errors, or random almost non existant BSOD's.... gah, no fun... especially when I lose a whole hours worth of gaming progress.

 

[noxqzs]

this is a documented problem that hasn't been ironed out yet. From what I gathered, there are issues with the nvidia drivers. it is not necessarily a Vista only problem. people on XP have experienced BSODs with the file in question as well.

Nvidia Forum

 

[El<(')>Maxi]

Did anyone with the problem bother to read/implement the two hotfixes redduc posted about???

 

[EmAn]

I am having this problem and i dont have the option of using one stick as i am using 2 x 512 and dont have money for newer ram.

P4 511 prescott (oc'ed to 3.12 ghz)
ECS p4m800-m7
evga 6600gt agp (oc'ed to 590/1000 i think thats what its at as riva tuner stopped working for me after an update a while ago)

 

[JenBell]

EmAN...not everyone has the funds to buy new ram to play games on vista.

Just to update people...163.44 betas whatever the latest ones are running totally stable on BioShock in both full screen and window mode. Had no NVLs so far which is fair enough.

Ok...EM...u really want to find out ur core stable drivers and take it from there...if u cant get any of the drivers at all stable then I really dont know where to start. Try the latest ones...take it from there then I guess. I would also make sure all the NVL instances are updated as per my previous messages....forgot to do it on my baby sis's PC and the NVL popped up like clock work.

Give me as much info on ur install process as possible and read this thread....refer to it myself when I need to dcheck something as it has all the info needed. PM me if its a bit OT/T...hope everyone has a nice weekend...ooo...and Bshock is sooooo scary....eeeeeek...have my teddy near me incase I need it (twice so far)...oh and I woke my neighbour up because I screamed....game is so kewl though

 

[phavey]

this is a documented problem that hasn't been ironed out yet. From what I gathered, there are issues with the nvidia drivers. it is not necessarily a Vista only problem. people on XP have experienced BSODs with the file in question as well.

I'm afraid you're looking in the wrong direction. The issue we are talking about is not nvidia-specific, but it is Vista-specific. It happens with nvidia and ATI cards running in a Vista environment. And it is not limited to a single card or driver, the whole range of ATI Radeon cards in combination with Vista has the problem.

If the two leading manufacturers of videocards have a problem with Vista, and neither of them can solve it... my guess is our friends in Redmond hold the key.

 

[Surfrider77]

I'm afraid you're looking in the wrong direction. The issue we are talking about is not nvidia-specific, but it is Vista-specific. It happens with nvidia and ATI cards running in a Vista environment. And it is not limited to a single card or driver, the whole range of ATI Radeon cards in combination with Vista has the problem.

If the two leading manufacturers of videocards have a problem with Vista, and neither of them can solve it... my guess is our friends in Redmond hold the key.

I wholeheartedly agree... to a point. I think the problem lies in both. This is evident when the latest MS Update forced a driver upgrade for nVidia cards for those with Automatic Update enabled. The forums had a hefty influx of people complaining about the nvlddmkm.sys error once the nVidia drivers were updated to one of the poorer versions through AutoUpdate.

Almost going on 9 months now...

 

[SuperDave1685]

The "hotfixes" that redduc posted do nothing more than limit the addressing space of 32-bit applications. Part of the problem arises from the new WDDM (windows driver display model). In XP, the application was the one that told Windows how much memory it needed. Now under Vista, you have the application AND Windows arguing over how much memory the program gets. You end up having the application get more memory than needed, getting very close to the traditional 2GB limit addressing space. This can cause a multitude of problems as you might imagine on a system that only has 2Gb of RAM. That hotfix allows the WDDM and the application to get a long a little better, especially video memory allocation. Hope that makes sense...

 

[EmAn]

EmAN...not everyone has the funds to buy new ram to play games on vista.

Just to update people...163.44 betas whatever the latest ones are running totally stable on BioShock in both full screen and window mode. Had no NVLs so far which is fair enough.

Ok...EM...u really want to find out ur core stable drivers and take it from there...if u cant get any of the drivers at all stable then I really dont know where to start. Try the latest ones...take it from there then I guess. I would also make sure all the NVL instances are updated as per my previous messages....forgot to do it on my baby sis's PC and the NVL popped up like clock work.

Give me as much info on ur install process as possible and read this thread....refer to it myself when I need to dcheck something as it has all the info needed. PM me if its a bit OT/T...hope everyone has a nice weekend...ooo...and Bshock is sooooo scary....eeeeeek...have my teddy near me incase I need it (twice so far)...oh and I woke my neighbour up because I screamed....game is so kewl though

see the thing is though is that it does it once vista gets to the desktop and then it doesnt do it again.

what is the best program to erase all of the old driver crap once i uninstall a driver?
and then i will go for the latest drivers

and does this also hold the key to my riva tuner not working any more?

 

[Surfrider77]

...
what is the best program to erase all of the old driver crap once i uninstall a driver?
and then i will go for the latest drivers...

DriverCleaner Pro. Google it, download it, and run it in Safe Mode after you have done the traditional "Add/Remove Programs List" removal of the drivers.