"nvlddmkm driver has stopped working"

Chincymcchilla

ok, first I will go ahead and explain that this problem is on the first computer I've ever built.

Stats: intel core duo E7300 @ 2.66 GHZ
4 GB RAM
NVIDIA Geforce 8800 GT

I am running 32 bit home vista, and have been doing so for about 3 months with no problems. Recently I went ahead and let windows do its thing, installing about 7 updates at once.

Tonight, I was playing a bit of Left 4 Dead and after about 30 minutes my screen went black. I alt tabbed out, and saw the message "Display driver nvlddmkm driver has stopped working and has recovered". I closed L4D and restarted, and this time in just a few minutes it started again.

I checked NVIDIA and it turned out there was a new driver, so I went ahead and installed. I played the game for about two hours this time, and the problem seems to be fixed.

However, being overtly paranoid since, well, i have no reciepts or anything because I am an idiot, I went ahead and googled this issue. That was a mistake. Pages and pages of people with this issue who claim their computers are essentially unusable now, who installed new drivers, checked their ram, werent overclocking (I am not either) and this issue kept occuring. I am now in a slight panic over this issue, and really dont even know what could be causing it.

So G&T, have any of you experienced this issue? Could you fix it? Should I be worried?

Zxerol

That error is notorious for being difficult to track the source of. Any number of things can apparently cause the driver to crash like that: driver errors, malfunctioning video cards, something screwy with the OS, gremlins infesting your intertubes, and [insert some other fanciful PC malady here]. I first experienced that error in Vista after an Nvidia driver update, and another update apparently fixed it.

In another case (which I'm not even sure was related), it got so bad that an hour or two of AeroGlass in Vista was causing the driver to reset. Turns out, the root cause was a unsatisfactory overclock... for my CPU.

So, yeah. If you stopped getting those errors, then count your blessings and forget about it. Some things are better left unsolved.

Dixon

I have a feeling that it was caused by the actual Windows Update, I never use it for updating my video card. Every time I have used it it has caused a problem. Once I noticed that when it grabbed a driver it didn't change every file and just updated specific files or replaced them with different files, while leaving the older files there.

I think thats what the problem relates to where once you did it with the Windows Update you have files incompatible with each other.

I'm not entirely sure though, I'm no expert. I just make sure to grab the updates from the nvidia website.

Azio

The game crashed. It happens occasionally. Unless it's crashing on a regular basis you don't need to worry about it. Just ignore it and game on, if it keeps happening then come back and we'll try to figure out what the problem is -- although it could take some time, as that type of error can be caused by literally anything.

JAEF

Used to have this error back when I was playing WoW off and on sometimes. Furiously annoying.

Most recent occurrence was when I turned up certain lighting graphical features in EQ2. Made some minor changes to lighting effects and bam, error started. Turned them back down, gone. Fuck that error. Between these two occurences I've played hours and hours of computer murdering games (Crysis, etc.) with no crashes.

Chincymcchilla

Well I played left 4 dead for like 6 hours straight today and didn't get it, so hopefully those new drivers fixed it. Just the responses on some other forums scared the crap out of me. Thanks guys!