GFX Driver issues: Kernel Mode Driver

Since about April this year I've had a problem that no-one has been able to help me solve.

I'm using Windows 7 Pro 32-bit with the latest updates excluding Internet Explorer 9. Everything related to my GFX card is up to date.

This problem is a Kernel Mode Driver for GFX cards.
This is the error message I get:
"Event 4101:
Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered."

I think it resides on the Windows side of my GFX drivers. I'm using an nVidia GeForce 9500GT and the driver version is 275.33. I've tried reinstalling older drivers (versions 181.71, 196.21, 266.58, and of course 275.33.) however the problem never improved or stopped.
This is why I think it's the Windows component of the driver, I've tried many things short of reinstalling my OS, which I'd like to avoid for the amount of backing up I'll have to do.

tl;dr version:

This is the error:
"Event 4101:
Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered." and I can't seem to fix it.


Help?

 

The OS has to control the gfx driver by running through the chipset driver, make sure you are using the latest chipset driver (don't use Device Manager to do this, go directly to the chipset maker and get the latest driver for your chipset from there).

Heat might be an issue here too - ensure that the internals are dust-free; even a fine film of dust on some Northbridge coolers can cause problems.

The 9500GT has been around a while, it's quite possible that it has developed a problem that only shows up when under stress.

 

Hello,
This seems to be a big issue with Windows 7.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd349439(WS.10).aspx

One person resolved the problem by doing the following.

 

Here's the interesting thing though, at my college we've had much more powerful and recent computers have occasionally had the same issue.

I'm pretty sure heat isn't much of an issue, a dust-out only takes a few minutes so I'll try the chipset drivers. If nothing at all works then I guess I'll have to settle on it being just an old GFX card.

Thanks for the help though, I really appreciate it.

 

I just tried the chipset update, and that power options method, and when my computer restarted to complete the driver install process it happened 3 times again less than 5 minutes after I logged back in.

It's like instead of having a time of the month, my comp has its time of the minute >.>

 

Try using LatencyMon to check that there's nothing hogging the kernel and slowing the control over the drivers.

 

Useful, but unfortunately it's designed for software and drivers that produce and control audio rather than graphics... Is there another too like it geared for GFX software?

 

It might look like it's for audio

Use it for 10 - 20 minutes, we need to see what's happening on your system.

 

Alrighty, I ran it for 23 mins using it as normal during that time. The failure occurred about 5 times during it, so hopefully something useful will turn up.

This is the report:
Highest DPC routine execution time (µs): 224
Responsible driver: ndis.sys (NDIS 6.20 driver, Microsoft Corporation)
DPC count (execution time <500 µs): 38471324
DPC count (execution time 500-999 µs): 0
DPC count (execution time 1000-1999 µs): 0
DPC count (execution time 2000-3999 µs): 0
DPC count (execution time >=4000 µs): 0

Highest ISR routine execution time (µs): 96
Responsible driver: dxgkrnl.sys (DirectX Graphics Kernel, Microsoft Corporation)
ISR count (execution time <250 µs): 48419320
ISR count (execution time 250-499 µs): 0
ISR count (execution time 500-999 µs): 0
ISR count (execution time 1000-1999 µs): 0
ISR count (execution time >=2000 µs): 0

Highest pagefault resolution time (µs): 8
Hard pagefault count (total): 28
Number of processes hit: 1
Pagefault count of hardest hit process: 28
Process with highest pagefault count: AVGIDSAgent.exe (PID: 2216)


Note: execution times may be calculated based on a fixed reported CPU speed. Disable variable speed settings like Intel Speed Step and AMD Cool N Quiet in the BIOS setup for more accurate results.
Reported CPU speed: 2339 MHz

And in the Processes page "avgidsagent.exe" had 28 hard pagefails.

 

Ok, most people would probably say that's a good result

So, where do we go from here ... how about turning off all the Aero pretties? Set it as the attachment please.

Have you installed DirectX 9.oC yet? If not, please do so - but test out the above first.

 

Well, my DirectX is fully up to date, and I did what you pointed out in the system settings.
You're not gonna believe this but it happened TWICE since I was forced to restart after my comp had a recently very rare crash.

So it still seems nothing's working, this is just insane.

 

So you installed DX 9? It's important that you do as DX 10/11 as installed with Vista/W7 only have subsets of DX 9, probably only enough for Aero on older integrated gfx chips. Your card doesn't support DX 11 anyway ...

Oooh, a real BSOD? Go to C:\Windows\Minidump, if there's a recent dump there, can you copy it to your Desktop then zip it and attach the zip please?

Once you've done that and tested for a while, we'll take a look at the default Services running and CPU% of Windows processes, see if there are any clues there.

 

The BSOD was for an IRQL_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL error.
Mostly this happens if my CPU or GPU overheats, but it's been really rare lately.

Here's the most recent .dmp file:
http://www.zshare.net/download/93378875ca859c9e/

I can't seem to find where to rolll back my DirectX to ver. 9 though, it's a sneaky little thing >.>

 

You don't rollback DirectX, the DX9 installer adds a more complete compatibility to DX10/11, install it over the top.

 

After a couple of minutes of research I found you're right, you can't rooll back DirectX, given that it'd be nice if it would run the installer instead of telling me my version is up to date and that it won't do the install because of it >.>

 

Hopefully, that tells us that DX9 has already been installed - it's the same message I just got; I originally installed DX9 the day I installed W7.

Your BSOD was from Jul 21 and it was a 116 TDR error, the video driver was slow in responding so Windows stepped in ... blah blah blah. This issue has been ongoing since XP or earlier, Vista and later W7 had parts of their code written anew to attempt to deal with the problem better than each of their predecessors. Your BSOD won't debug correctly for me but I doubt if it would be of much help anyway.

I'd advise you to spend an hour or so reading the nVidia forums version of this problem in the first post in this thread, there will be some nuggets in the remainder of the comments also - this problem is very troublesome and difficult to fix, what works for some does not work for others

If you wanted to take the time to create a list of possible causes/fixes and bring it back here, I'd be happy to try to help you work through them in some kind of logical way.

If you've had any artifacts showing, it would almost certainly mean that the GFX card was at fault, reflowing may be a temporary fix for that. Otherwise, it could be almost anything else.

 

I can remember almost all of the fixes I've tried so far, so here's a list of them simplified:

1. Updating/rolling back nVidia drivers
2. Changing Aero and Windows display settings
3. Total removal and reinstall of GFX drivers
4. Locating and moving/removing the damaged driver file
5. Chipset driver update
6. Attempted update of DirectX 9.0c
7. Checked CPU and GPU temperatures, nothing problematic
8. Windows Service Pack and other Windows updates (Excluding IE9 because I'm not letting that crud on my computer)
9. Changed power mode options, created custom full performance plan
10. Checked for game patches (first thing I did as it started happening shortly after I got NFS: Hot Pursuit from Steam)
11. Removing/ignoring 3D portion of driver software
12. Computer performance testing, temperature checks, benchmarking
13. And finally the ever popular verbal threats of course

I did notice however that somethimes on the very rare occasion this happens to my screen when the error occurs:
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/2119/wtfuh.jpg

This was a particularly bad one, but typically when it's happened it hasn't been bad enough to stop me using the computer, just screws things up visually.

 

That graphic makes me think the gfx card has serious problems. Any hardware issues must be sorted before moving on to Windows/drivers, etc.

Can you access a known working gfx card to test?

 

As it stands, no I can't, the other PC in this house only has integrated graphics