Diagnosing Display Driver Failure

[MpG]

Perhaps somebody can throw a few ideas out on this little problem. The rig is a 2500K/GTX580 setup. Traditional stress-tests (prime/IBT/Benchmarks/etc) are have always been rock solid.

Lately, I've been getting occasional display driver failures while gaming. The kind that show up the event logs as a 4101 with the "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered" message. I've seen this before, but the culprits in the past were overclocking and overheating issues. This card is factory clocked and according to Afterburner, temps barely even break 70c under full load.

The only notable thing that I can find is that when it happens, every time, vRam usage briefly spikes to 2GB (which is impressive, since it's a 1.5GB card). But I can't find anything else meaningful. Any other areas I could look at, or programs that might identify a problem area?

 

[3.0charlie]

Tired PSU?

 

[LaughingCrow]

It seems to be a common error at times and not easy to pin down.

Did you update your NVidea drivers recently or allow Windows to update it perhaps?
I got the same error message for a while on one card, uninstalled driver, installed an earlier driver version and it seemed to fixed it. Then eventually leapfrogged to a more recent driver without any problems.

What OS?

Did you run DXDiag and did it show any problems?

Did you check for any other driver issues? (Computer Management/Device Manager)

 

[MpG]

Well, the PSU is an AX850, only a year and a half old, and it never broke a sweat even when driving a Titan earlier, nor were there any signs of instability. It's possible that the card itself is at fault, but it was rock solid in the past. Device manager and dxdiag have come up clean. At this point, I'm actually getting suspicious of Flash, what with the weird vRAM spikes that coincide with the errors.

For the time being, I'm going to throw on the 334.89's that have just come out, might get lucky that way.

 

[mkultra]

use "clean installation" if you suspect issue with previous drivers

 

[enaberif]

Well, the PSU is an AX850, only a year and a half old, and it never broke a sweat even when driving a Titan earlier, nor were there any signs of instability. It's possible that the card itself is at fault, but it was rock solid in the past. Device manager and dxdiag have come up clean. At this point, I'm actually getting suspicious of Flash, what with the weird vRAM spikes that coincide with the errors.

For the time being, I'm going to throw on the 334.89's that have just come out, might get lucky that way.

Turn off hardware accleration in flash first if you suspect that and see what happens.
Adobe Community: How do I disable or enable hardware acceleration?

And as stated if you are going to update the drivers do a clean install.

 

[highpie]

be sure to remove all traces of old drivers and software maby

 

[Johnny Buntu]

Perhaps somebody can throw a few ideas out on this little problem. The rig is a 2500K/GTX580 setup. Traditional stress-tests (prime/IBT/Benchmarks/etc) are have always been rock solid.

Lately, I've been getting occasional display driver failures while gaming. The kind that show up the event logs as a 4101 with the "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered" message. I've seen this before, but the culprits in the past were overclocking and overheating issues. This card is factory clocked and according to Afterburner, temps barely even break 70c under full load.

The only notable thing that I can find is that when it happens, every time, vRam usage briefly spikes to 2GB (which is impressive, since it's a 1.5GB card). But I can't find anything else meaningful. Any other areas I could look at, or programs that might identify a problem area?

What Windows OS please..if its Windows 8.1 , its an OS issue not a hardware issue.

 

[KaptCrunch]

Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered

means driver is being reset without requiring a reboot

look carefully into the wide range of other causes of TDR issues such as overclocked components, incorrect component compatibility and settings (especially memory configuration and timings), defective parts (memory modules, motherboards, etc.), insufficient system cooling, and insufficient system power. Throughout the forums, there are numerous reports of hardware solutions to TDRs.

poor written driver or failing hardware

 

[MpG]

Just a quick update - since installing the 334.89's, haven't had it occur again. Although I haven't had much chance to game in the last week either. Might have gotten lucky this time.