Crashing nVidia driver. NVLDDMKM.SYS Help! ;)

[Kelemvor]

So I have a brand new, Geforce 210 video card.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150640

Computer is running Windows 7 Pro.

I had an old crappy video card in there to install Windows and everything worked fine. I got this new card and installed it. I connected it up via the VGA port and booted into Windows just fine.

A minute later Windows Update popped up with a couple updates. One of them was the Nvidia 306.92 drivers. I let everything install and rebooted. The PC now boots up with video past BIOS but once it gets ready to bring up the actual desktop, I get a blank screen. The monitor goes off like it's in power save mode, and nothing will bring it back other than hard powering off the PC.

I tried booting into Low Res mode but that didn't work. I then just went into Safe Mode and uninstalled the Nvidia drivers. I rebooted and Windows came up just fine.

I went to XFX's website to see what drivers they had and they also listed the 306.92 driver.

I decided to install the CD that came with the card which has the 301.42 drivers on it. That install worked but during the boot, I'd get a thin white line when Windows was starting to load. Then I'd get a screen where it was split so the top wrapped around to the bottom and the screen was split in half. That would flicker off and on a few times and I then got a BSOD referencing NVLDDMKM.SYS and 0x00000116.

Google says this is related to the driver, which I could already figure out, but I can't find a way to make this work.

Anyone have any ideas on what I can do to get this machine to boot up and work properly?

Thanks!!


UPDATE:
So here's what else I did after the OP.

Booted to safe mode and uninstalled the nVidia drivers
Booted back to Windows normally and it came up fine with a generic VGA driver.
Downloaded the current nVidia driver (306.97) and did a Clean Install.
Rebooted and Windows got up as far as the "Starting Windows" screen with the shimmering Windows logo in the middle of the screen. It stayed at that point for 5-10 minutes so I powered it off.
I then repeated the above steps and tried the newest Beta drivers (310.something) but it had the exact same results.
No more crashing or BSODs, just never moving past the Starting Windows screen.

No idea if the card is bad or what the problem might be.
The MB only has a PCIe 1.0a slot and the card is PCIe 2.0 which everything online said is no problem. Just the 2.1 cards would probably have trouble in a PCIe 1.0 slot.

And there we are so far.

 

[Jaydip]

What was your old card?

 

[Kelemvor]

The old card was just some PCI card from 5-10+ years ago. It was the only thing I had laying around that I could put in this machine since all my other cards were AGP and this computer on has PCI and PCI-e.

 

[Jaydip]

use driver sweeper/ccleaner before installing NV drivers.If it doesn't fix that reinstall windows.

 

[Kelemvor]

I tried a driver cleaner program at one point as well and it didn't seem to help. I use Driver Sweeper which has now become Driver Fusion at one point. I didn't use it between every install though.

Also updated the OP with more details.

 

[Super8]

Had the same issue with my GeForce GT 540M on my laptop. I needed to downclock GPU clock to 500 MHz and then all the problems disappeard. I think you're having serious problems with power supply.

 

[Kelemvor]

Well, it's Dell 745 with a 305 watt PSU. Nothing fancy but there's nothing else connected other than the HDD. It previously had a different PCIe card in there that I think worked fine.

Is there some way I can underclock the card via safemode? Is that an nVidia utility or something? I'd like to try that before buying a new PSU.

 

[Kelemvor]

I just checked the box and it says it requires a minimum:

300W or greated system power supply (with a minimum 12V current rating of 18A) based on a PC configured with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor

I don't have any other PSUs laying around but could buy a different one. However, I know Dell uses a lot of proprietary equipment so I don't know if that's even an option. It's a 745 Mini Tower case.

I was going to try a 500W PSU I have but the big connector that goes onto the MB wasn't the right size.

 

[mple]

Going to have to say that it's a defective card. I had a laptop with a discrete NVIDIA card with the same issue. I tried every possible software fix including multiple reformats. In the end, swapping out the mobo (since the card was soldered on) was the only true fix to the issue.

 

[Kelemvor]

OK, I found that my 500W PSU has that extra dongle thing to make it fit. So I hooked that up, reinstalled the nVidia drivers and got the exact same error.

I'm going to take the card to work tomorrow and pop it in a spare system there just to see what happens. Hopefully it doesn't work there either so at least I know. Or I can just return it to Newegg and get something different. I don't want to go weeks for an RMA when it's faster to just buy another card...

 

[cmdrdredd]

I was getting driver crashes like this with my EVGA GTX670 SC card which was part of a bad batch. Definitely sounds like a similar thing for you.

 

[Kelemvor]

Well, I'm going to take it to work and try it there. However, either way, it doesn't work in my system so it's going back.

I'll probably get this one since it's only an extra $7 and is a brand we all know.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130606