Nvidia Video Cards + Drivers

Lee Downham · Dec 5, 2008

... I read in a few places that the suspicion is that its nothing to do with Nvidia, nor ATI, instead its a Microsoft issue - which I am far more prone to believe.

Probably a directx issue which is in turn is crashing display drivers :nono:

Nigel Atkins · Dec 5, 2008

Lee Downham said:
... I read in a few places that the suspicion is that its nothing to do with Nvidia, nor ATI, instead its a Microsoft issue - which I am far more prone to believe.

Probably a directx issue which is in turn is crashing display drivers :nono:

yep i read of people fixing it by deleting certain windows updates.

also some have a problem with Aero (what ever that is)

ATI users with dual screens at different screen res report problems.

the list just goes on and on

Dietmar · Dec 6, 2008

Nigel Atkins said:
also some have a problem with Aero (what ever that is)

Aero is this new cool (and i must admit, though I hate to do, it is really cool) user interface with this transparent features and where you have a window preview on the task switcher etc. Can actually be switched on and off. Default is off, so if you want to use it, you need to enable it.

btw I 'just' did a clean install (Vista) with old drivers...lets see, last time it took a week until it crashed first time.

Lee Downham · Dec 6, 2008

My suspicions are with the damn windows defender updates ... every time I have been stable and then get a sudden spate of crashes, it seems to be after one of these damn things

Dietmar · Dec 9, 2008

Dietmar Auferkorte said:
btw I 'just' did a clean install (Vista) with old drivers...lets see, last time it took a week until it crashed first time.

Not long

!

Now trying to switch off Aero...holds longer than the last attempt so far!

Dietmar · Dec 13, 2008

I am scared to death to make this post:

Might be solved for me! Last time I made this post, a couple of minutes later...bang!

Unfortunately I made two changes at the same time, so am not sure, which one was the important, but I have an idea. Changes I made:

Downgrade my BIOS
Disbabled Aero

Sander Hogendoorn · Dec 23, 2008

Hm.. 10 days ago I turned of the Aero stuff in Vista, and all has been good so far. I'll keep fingers crossed

IIIUUU · Dec 29, 2008

Brass air fittings

Now that is a lot of brass air fittings http://www.liangdianup.com/subpages/airfitting_1.htm there is just about every type
of air fitting that you could want. Wholesale prices too. I guess these could be used as small water pipe fitting also. I
used some of the parts to make my babington wvo bu

Grégory Cogotti · Dec 31, 2008

Guy...You have to say "no" to the drug :stop:

Sander Hogendoorn · Jan 4, 2009

Well, after 2 weeks without problems this weekend it's messed up again. Yesterday I got 1, and today 1 already (both in iRacing).

Pff.

Marcel Hulsbergen · Jan 4, 2009

I did some research and i found this.

Before Vista SP1 there was an update KB938194 which was a solution for this problem, you can find this update here:

Vista 32 bit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...9D-C33D-48DB-A7E3-62EEF7C1F7C2&displaylang=en

Vista 64 bit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...44-FEF3-4C80-AF1A-8B732DCB2756&displaylang=en

But we all have SP1 and this is what i found on Technet:
This issue was supposed to have been fixed in KB938194. This fix may have been rolled up into SP1, but I can't seem to find if it's included. However, I assume that it is because I have SP1 installed and this hotfix standalone installer tells me it doesn't apply to my system.
The issue that 938194 addresses does not completely resolve the issue of video display drivers not responding and recovering. I have installed two separate cards (ATI and Nvidia) on my Quad Core Vista 64 system in hopes of resolving this issue. I even went so far as to install the Omega drivers for Nvidia. None of these changes resolve this issue. Under very specific application conditions, that I can reproduce every time, the screen goes black for a few seconds, a bubble pops up from the systray that tells me the video driver has stopped responding and then recovered and then the application stops responding (crashes).

So i think SP1 is the bad thing here, this update can't be applied for SP1 users and MS forgot to implement it into SP1.

But there should be a solution for this.

Windows Vista attempts to detect these problematic hang situations and recover a responsive desktop dynamically. In this process, the Microsoft Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) driver is reinitialized and the GPU is reset. No reboot is necessary, which greatly enhances the user experience. The only visible artifact from the hang detection to the recovery is a screen flicker, which results from resetting some portions of the graphics stack, causing a screen redraw. Some older Microsoft DirectX applications may render to a black screen at the end of this recovery. The end user would have to restart these applications.
The following is a brief overview of the TDR process:

Timeout detection: The Video Scheduler component of the Windows Vista graphics stack detects that the GPU is taking more than the permitted quantum time to execute the particular task and tries to preempt this particular task. The preempt operation has a "wait" timeout—the actual "TDR timeout." This step is thus the "timeout detection" phase of the process. The default timeout period in Windows Vista is 2 seconds. If the GPU cannot complete or preempt the current task within the TDR timeout, then the GPU is diagnosed as hung.

Preparation for recovery: The operating system informs the WDDM driver that a timeout has been detected and it must reset the GPU. The driver is told to stop accessing memory and should not access hardware after this time. The operating system and the WDDM driver collect hardware and other state information that could be useful for post-mortem diagnosis.

Desktop recovery: The operating system resets the appropriate state of the graphics stack. The Video Memory Manager component of the graphics stack purges all allocations from video memory. The WDDM driver resets the GPU hardware state. The graphics stack takes the final actions and restores the desktop to the responsive state. As mentioned earlier, some older DirectX applications may now render just black, and the user may be required to restart these applications. Well-written DirectX 9Ex and DirectX 10 applications that handle "Device Remove" continue to work correctly. The application must release and then recreate its Microsoft Direct3D device and all of its objects. DirectX application programmers can find more information in the Windows SDK.

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).

Maybe this solves the problem:
HKLM/System/CurrentControlSet/Control/GraphicsDrivers
New Dword named "TdrDelay" value default at 2, change it to 8

My thoughts are also that it could be NTune related, do you all own a motherboard with and NVIDIA chiset eg 650i, 680i?
If so, try to remove NTune and see the results.

Sander Hogendoorn · Jan 4, 2009

Thanks Marcel

I also found another possible fix:

http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=118448

and this:

http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=260&threadid=105724&highlight_key=y

Edit: I now have applied the fix in the second link. Hope this works.

Dietmar · Jan 4, 2009

Intel P45 Chipset and ATI 3870.

Ok, I have reinstalled my system in the mean time again due to another annoyance of Vista (The default configuration send my PC to sleep after an hour, unfortunately it NEVER came back, saw everything including blue screens, at the end the boot procedure took about 20 minutes).

But since I deactivated Aero I never saw the problem again!

Sander Hogendoorn · Jan 7, 2009

The fix I tried didn't work. Now I try the next possible fix:

Fix #1; uninstalling hotfix KB952287

http://www.repairyourpcnow.com/resources/atikmdag-has-stopped-responding.php

Sander Hogendoorn · Jan 8, 2009

3 days no problems, but 10 mins ago 1 recovery again. On to the next 'fix' I guess :neutral:

Marcel Hulsbergen · Jan 13, 2009

Nvidia Official Forceware 181.20 update with new beta's

Nvidia has released the Official Forceware 181.20 WHQL drivers for Windows XP and Vista.

These drivers add support for the new GTX 295 and 285 cards, as well as supporting the GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9 and 200 series.

This version contains a range of fixes, as well as performance improvements in a range of games when compared with the 178 series WHQL Forceware drivers.

Note that the package also contains the 8.10.13 PhysX drivers.

Grégory Cogotti · Jan 13, 2009

Marcel Hulsbergen said:
Maybe this solves the problem:
HKLM/System/CurrentControlSet/Control/GraphicsDrivers
New Dword named "TdrDelay" value default at 2, change it to 8

I tried this and i can say that i occured some fps drop after (maybe it's the cause of my issue on Valencia). Anyone else tried this fix?

Adam Vaughan · Jan 14, 2009

Just had this myself, sky went green and the FPS dropped and then it crashed for a second and then when I went off GTR Evo it was there in the corner.

Nigel Atkins · Jan 14, 2009

touch wood................i havent had any probs for ages with the 169 drivers and running settings on low/med. but as soon as i increase graphic detail i get frezzers galore.

Peter · Jan 14, 2009

I always have this error when i'm playing gtrevo, I have tried every thing I fount on the web for month. this afternoon I instald Windows 7 and I raced for houres and it playd like hell, no errors like the driver stopt working. Its great.