Stabability problems with Vista

[hotsoda]

I've been running Vista on and off for a while now, and I've only had this problem recently (I'd say a few weeks ago).

I have the following hardware:
Asus P5n-e SLI
Intel e6300
eVGA 7800GT
Kingston 2GB HyperX Ram

Randomly, my screen would go blank for a second and come back, giving me a "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding" error (which seems to be a widespread problem on nVidia's forums). I have since RMAed the 7800GT (I had other problems with it too, but never like this) and bought a Gigabite 7200GS so I could still use my computer. When I put it in and booted the machine up, I was greeted to a blue screen (and a reboot half a second later). I chose the "Last known good configuration option at the next startup", which worked, but I still get random blue screens when I boot up or resume from standby.

To add to that, my machine blue screens randomly on the desktop. It could be fine running for 6 hours or run for a total of 5 minutes before it gives me an error. All of the blue screens seem to be tied to the nVidia drivers (as per the Problem and Solution program in Vista), but I've reinstalled them at least 4 times and I've run into the same problems with nVidia and the WDM drivers.

I ran a Memtest a while ago just to be sure my memory wasn't bad, and it passed (I'll run one again just to make sure), but does anyone have any advice?

 

[cmdrdredd]

You changed Videocards without uninstalling drivers That alone is your problem. Even if it is Nvidia still it is not the same card. Windows is trying to use driver specific calls which the card does not handle.

 

[Aznguy1872]

To be more precise on what to do. Run drivercleaner and reinstall the nvidia drivers.

 

[hotsoda]

Did that, no good.

My first bootup was fine, but when I started this morning (I had the machine on standby), there was no signal to the monitor. I shut it down and rebooted, with a few more blue screens. One attempt finally worked, which is how I'm typing this right now.

I should have another mother board en route (with the video card still being RMAed), so I'll see if it's a hardware problem or not. Until then, I may have to resort to using the Ubuntu live CD if it doesn't crash.

 

[Fallen Kell]

I had the same problem and it started because I updated my drivers for my 7800GTX. I do not believe that the drivers properly uninstall with either Nvidia's uninstaller, OR drivercleaner. I couldn't fix the problem not matter what I tried, and all my "snapshot" point-in-time recovery points were corrupted or missing (don't know why, I think it may be because my OS disk had very little free space left and it may have deleted them to make space?). In any case, I had to do a full system wipe and reload to fix the problem. Nothing else I tried was able to resolve this. I managed to get it working "ok" (i.e. only a couple crashes a day, unlike the crash every 20 seconds I had after I did the upgrade), but nothing I did could fully fix the problems, which was when I gave up and punted...

 

[hotsoda]

Were you running Vista at the time?

 

[hotsoda]

Here's what the blue screen dump says:

FAULTING_IP:
nvlddmkm+56a0
8bec36a0 ?? ???

DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID: GRAPHICS_DRIVER_TDR_TIMEOUT

BUGCHECK_STR: 0x117

PROCESS_NAME: System

CURRENT_IRQL: 0

STACK_TEXT:
89028ce4 8be9c5bb 00000000 8bec36a0 85644008 dxgkrnl!TdrUpdateDbgReport+0x68
89028d0c 8be968cf 00000000 88505f44 85644008 dxgkrnl!TdrCollectDbgInfoStage2+0x17f
89028d48 8be9c78f 85644008 88505a80 89028d6c dxgkrnl!DXGADAPTER::Reset+0xa6
89028d58 8beb44e0 85644008 00000000 88505a80 dxgkrnl!TdrResetFromTimeout+0x12
89028d6c 8be8ace2 88505a80 884f96a8 89028dc0 dxgkrnl!VidSchiRecoverFromTDR+0x17
89028d7c 82225472 88505a80 89023680 00000000 dxgkrnl!VidSchiWorkerThread+0x61
89028dc0 8209141e 8be8ac81 88505a80 00000000 nt!PspSystemThreadStartup+0x9d
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 nt!KiThreadStartup+0x16


STACK_COMMAND: .bugcheck ; kb

FOLLOWUP_IP:
nvlddmkm+56a0
8bec36a0 ?? ???

SYMBOL_NAME: nvlddmkm+56a0

FOLLOWUP_NAME: MachineOwner

MODULE_NAME: nvlddmkm

IMAGE_NAME: nvlddmkm.sys

DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP: 46c63692

FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: 0x117_IMAGE_nvlddmkm.sys

BUCKET_ID: 0x117_IMAGE_nvlddmkm.sys

 

[cmdrdredd]

That's Nvidia's crappy Vista drivers at work. That's the only reason I will not buy an Nvidia card. Faster than an ATI card or not, I need drivers to work properly.

 

[hotsoda]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
That's Nvidia's crappy Vista drivers at work. That's the only reason I will not buy an Nvidia card. Faster than an ATI card or not, I need drivers to work properly.

Funny you say that. My friend has an ATI HD 2900XT with the same problem (and it happened right after he swapped cards). We're having a contest, but so far I'm winning.

 

[LEKO]

Humm....

This looks that a friend of mine is running into the same kind of problem.

MOBO: Asus P5N-E Sli
CPU: Core 2 Duo E4500
GPU: EVGA 8800GT 512Megs (SuperClocked Edition)
MEMORY: OCZ Reaper HPC Edition (PC2-6400) 800MHz (4-4-4-15-1T) (2x1Gig)
PSU: Antec TruePower 2.0 380Watts

We just got all this stuff from an online retailer, we have freshly installed WinXP SP-2 on that machine and Windows is crashing in a weird fashion... No blue screen, only system messages about executables that can't recover some errors. Even Dr. Watson crash on it's own while trying to sending grash report.

Here is what we tried to fix the issue:
- Remove/reinstall/updates drivers
- Reinstall Windows XP
- Moving memory stick in different slots and running with only one

It's seems to be related to Video Drivers, but not 100% sure. I'm not in front of the PC right now, but my friend mentioned that he managed to reinstall WinXP, once into it, he installed it's game (The Witcher) and it can't run it, crash when he tries to enter the game.

What I'll ask him to do, is to run the PC without the nVidia Video drivers, to see if the system is stable... This kind of issue piss me off! I always try to build system with good reputation and I always install latest drivers... That's the life!

Any suggestions???

 

[clickynext]

I get that too, but it was reduced significantly by lowering my overclock on the card.

 

[LEKO]

Originally posted by: clickynext
I get that too, but it was reduced significantly by lowering my overclock on the card.

You reduced the eVGA default clock speed???

 

[Bradtechonline]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
That's Nvidia's crappy Vista drivers at work. That's the only reason I will not buy an Nvidia card. Faster than an ATI card or not, I need drivers to work properly.

Oh the irony, I remember when Nvidia had better drivers than ATI. I swore I'd never use ATI because of the nightmares my friends had with their 9600 and 9800's. Now I'm running ATI/AMD.

 

[nullpointerus]

Looks like reformat time!

isgust;

(Hmm...the forum software screwed up its own generated smiley code.)