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Display driver nvlddmkm has stopped working...Vista 32 bit

GraviijaGraviija Registered User regular
All right, to preface this entire message, I am an amateur with complicated computer fixes. System Restore is pretty much the extent of my trouble shooting knowledge.

Last night, after attempting to open a VLC media file, my laptop essentially shit itself. The screen went black, then came back on. Little artifacts started appearing all over. The computer, or display at least, completely freezes. A little warning message popped up in the task bar area, saying "display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered." This seems like a lie, though since all the problems remain.

I'm on my parents computer writing this post. I've looked online for solutions, and found this is a somewhat common problem for Vista. Suggestions for a solution include a hotfix from Microsoft, deleting a regular Windows update, messing with the power the computer draws, and so on. The problem is, the freezing/glitching upon start up is so bad I can barely access anything before the computer freaks out again and restarts itself.

I can run in Safe Mode with no problems.

As the title suggests, I'm running 32 bit Vista on my HP laptop. I have 3 gigs of RAM, a 512 MB videocard, dual core processor.

I'm at a loss. Does anyone have any ideas on what to do here? Or am I completely fucked?

Graviija on

Posts

  • urahonkyurahonky Registered User regular
    edited March 2010
    Have you tried downloading a new display driver for your laptop and then installing that? It just sounds like the Nvidia driver took a crap.

    urahonky on
  • GraviijaGraviija Registered User regular
    edited March 2010
    The thing is, I barely do anything before the computer freezes completely and then restarts itself. It'll stay on for a few seconds, and the go to shit. For example, I am currently looking at a black screen with the mouse cursor fozen in the middle. It was been stuck in the same position for about 5 minutes.

    Is there anything I can do from Safe Mode that will help in regular mode? Because that's really the only way I can do just about anything on my laptop. Or maybe I can transfer a fix via flashdrive? I don't know.

    Graviija on
  • AzioAzio Registered User regular
    edited March 2010
    How old is the computer? Maybe it's just full of dust

    Azio on
  • GraviijaGraviija Registered User regular
    edited March 2010
    It's a couple years old.

    But I may be on to something! The computer randomly decided to, like, work, so I am currently downloading the newest drivers for my videocard. Here's hoping things work out. Thanks for the help, either way.

    Graviija on
  • donhonkdonhonk Registered User regular
    edited March 2010
    I have had this problem, for me it was overheating. Try using compressed air to blow it out.

    donhonk on
  • GraviijaGraviija Registered User regular
    edited March 2010
    So I got the Nvidia drivers installed. Now the computer won't start normally at all, and Startup Repair is working. I love when fixes make the problem worse.

    Before this, I had a blue screen come up telling me there may have been a problem with recently installed hardware or software, which seems to indicate to me that the drivers were fucked.

    Aaaaand now the computer shuts off automatically a few seconds after I try to boot it. And this has happened consistently for the past 45 minutes or so. Excellent.

    Graviija on
  • urahonkyurahonky Registered User regular
    edited March 2010
    Yeah it has to be an overheating issue at this point, at least that is what it seems. But does it work in Safe Mode? Like, boot into Safe Mode and let it sit for a while and see if it restarts on you then.

    urahonky on
  • MoorkusMoorkus Registered User regular
    edited March 2010
    I had a 'nvlddmkm driver stopped responding' problem recently before my gtx 260 died. It began with problems similar to yours, think the first time it happened was while I was playing some old game, after that the graphics card would randomly stop responding, I could be playing a game or checking my email, windows would just freeze up and then puke all over itself.

    Then after a while windows started blue-screening on startup (again, nvlddmkm errors). About one time in ten I could get windows to load ok, but the card would just stop responding after a few minutes.
    I tried several different drivers, checked temperatures (which were perfectly fine), googled possible causes and fixes for a couple of hours and tried a whole bunch of them, but got fed up and finally tried installing the card in two other computers which both experienced the exact same problems.

    Shortly thereafter the graphics card unsurprisingly died.

    I hope in your case it's just some messed up driver error, but it sounds a lot like what happened to me, and I wasted a lot of time googling fixes before I just gave up and tried it out in my old computers.

    Moorkus on
  • GraviijaGraviija Registered User regular
    edited March 2010
    Damn you for not fill me with false confidence!

    I just got done speaking with an HP tech guy whose solution to my problem was complete system recovery.

    Gee, thanks, guy. But I think I could have figured out "wipe everything!" by myself.

    Graviija on
  • General_WinGeneral_Win Registered User regular
    edited March 2010
    I'm also thinking heat problem. How old is your laptop and is it still under warranty?

    nVidia put out some crap laptop chips that were 100% guaranteed to fail a year or two ago. At my work, our nVidia laptops from a couple of years ago are failing.

    If you can prove to the support people that the problem isn't OS related and you're under warranty push for a video card/motherboard replacement.

    General_Win on
    tf2_sig.png
  • VaelorVaelor Registered User regular
    edited March 2010
    Had you just recently updated your drivers? The latest Nvidia driver release was totally fucked. Caused fan speed issues which resulted in many GPU's overheating.

    Anyone using 196.75 should rollback pronto. Nvidia agrees with this, and is encouraging such on their website.

    Vaelor on
  • DranythDranyth Surf ColoradoRegistered User regular
    edited March 2010
    I was getting this error back when I first built the current computer I'm using, it ended up being the RAM I got being slightly bad. Have you tried running a full memtest cycle on it?

    Dranyth on
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