For those who get "display driver not responding"

[hunkeelin]

If you tried everything like reinstall drivers etc....

it's probably the intel speedstep where it underclock itself to a very low frequency that cause the gpu to act that way. (source: http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=642390)

to solve this problem disable speed stepping.

 

[RavenSEAL]

In the BIOS i'm pretty sure

 

[LoneNinja]

Go into your BIOS disable it, and just to be safe disable power saving features in Windows.

However I've had problems with "display driver has stopped responding" and I don't own an Intel CPU, and I have AMDs Cool n Quiet disabled as I manually adjust clock speeds myself with K10stat.

 

[hunkeelin]

then is porbably ur cpu clock is not high enough to match ur gpu

 

[MadScientist]

Started getting the "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered" a few times a day after updating my nvidia drivers a few months ago. Reloaded the old drivers and it stopped. Just updated to the newest drivers, 295.73, 3 days ago and so far so good. Was it the drivers and has nvidia fixed it???

After reading this post in the MS forums I'm still not totally convinced it was the drivers.

"Based on some research I've done on this topic, I learned that with certain video cards, Windows 7's power saving settings reduce the voltage to the video card too much when it's idle.
Many 3D cards require a minimum voltage to be stable, but when "idle", they are basically asleep so everything should be ok.
However, now that so many apps are "hardware or video accelerated" (like Flash, Quicktime, Java, Firefox 4, IE9), the video card is being used when it's in "idle mode" and under-voltage.
The only way to fix this is to tweak advanced settings using 3rd party tools (and possibly fry the video card), or wait for MS to patch this, if ever."

Has anyone tried any of these MS recommendations? http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2665946
Method 3: "Increase the GPU processing time by adjusting the Timeout Detection and Recovery registry value" also seems plausible.

 

[chubbyfatazn]

then is porbably ur cpu clock is not high enough to match ur gpu

I'm kind of surprised you managed to build that rig in your sig if you really believe that statement...

Whenever I got that problem, I just had to launch ATI Tray Tools and manually set the speed and voltage. Problem went away. Then again, I never update drivers unless something doesn't work...

 

[Maximilian]

then is porbably ur cpu clock is not high enough to match ur gpu

PICNIC/PEBKAC

/thread

 

[skipsneeky2]

I mostly doubt ocing has anything to do with driver instability,i think its mostly in the version itself i believe as iv'e had other nvidia cards on other drivers that did crash like that even with no overclocking.

I had my gtx560 for basically a month coming today without a single issue on 285.62 and its clocked at asus direct cu2 top clocks and stable.

 

[iluvdeal]

I get this error with my GTX460 every couple weeks or so. Very annoying. I did the whole cleanup of drivers and reinstall but that didn't stop them from happening. I was beginning to suspect the video card might be defective and still do but I can't duplicate that error on demand so I think it would be difficult to RMA. It usually happens when I'm doing nonintensive stuff like just web browsing, stuff where the system isn't being stressed at all, it never happens during gaming.

I never heard about disabling speedstep or increasing the Tdrdelay in the reg, so I'll give those two things a try. Thanks for the tips.

 

[zCypher]

I also have a GTX460, the only time I've ever seen this error message is when overclocking my 1100T to unstable levels. Return OC to stable levels or to stock clocks - the error is nowhere to be seen.

 

[ezgonzo]

i've encountered this issue a fair few times, it seem's to be caused by a number of variables,
poor driver's being one, an unstable gpu oc is another, also i've found that installing driver's over other driver's without uninstalling the old one's properly can cause issue's.

ez.

 

[JimmiG]

When I overclocked my CPU, I would get random freezes or BSODs pointing to the graphics driver and sometimes other drivers or system files. This usually happened when browsing the web, watching flash video, ie. stuff that's not very demanding on the CPU. The system was stable for 12+ hours running Prime95, Memtest etc.

Turned out the problem was Cool n Quiet. I guess the CPU simply isn't able to constantly jump from a very low frequency and voltage to the upper limit of its capability and then back again. It must be confusing for the OS and software too..one millisecond you have an 800 MHz CPU, the next it's running at 4 GHz.. I'm sure it must throw the timing out of whack somewhere.

Better use such extreme power saving measures only in mobile devices that run off battery power. It's not like your CPU will constantly consume 140W without Speedstep/CnQ enabled. The good old HLT instruction that has been in Windows for over a decade still works. Maybe it would make sense for an always-on file server or similar, but then you wouldn't overclock such a machine anyway.

 

[imaheadcase]

I've NEVER had this problem untill the 290s series of drivers. Ever since then it happens daily. That is after 2 diffrent computer builds.

 

[RU482]

I get this message occasionally when starting BF3 on my 6870. Seems like it is always the same server, or at the same map that causes the issue

 

[Haserath]

I got the message once when I undervolted my GPU; a few minutes into a game and the game crashed. A little added voltage fixed that.

I used to also get this message when I had a gtx 280. Both the first and the RMA would do it occassionally, and both only lasted about 6 months each.

 

[nanaki333]

i was getting that with my dual 7970s after i upgraded my memory. took it out and just ran my old stuff and it went away. i ran memtest86 on all of it and everything checked out. sooooo..... i'm putting this off as a compatibility issue.

 

[Jman13]

I've gotten it a few times with my GTX 460 playing Deus Ex Human Revolution. I backed off my video card overclock a little bit and haven't had it happen since.

 

[Ferzerp]

This thread is kind of silly.

"Display driver is not responding" is as generic as "blue screen with video driver" was in XP. In fact, it's basically the same thing, but vista and 7 can recover from most of the scenarios. There is no one cause, in fact, there are going to be so many causes that saying you have them and why you had them really isn't going to help anyone.

 

[MadScientist]

This thread is kind of silly.

"Display driver is not responding" is as generic as "blue screen with video driver" was in XP. In fact, it's basically the same thing, but vista and 7 can recover from most of the scenarios. There is no one cause, in fact, there are going to be so many causes that saying you have them and why you had them really isn't going to help anyone.

I'd have to partially agree with you. If you search the internet you will find that this is a very generic error and can be attributed to many causes, but if any if these suggestions here help anyone then I don't consider the thread "silly".

From AMD support site: http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/737-27116RadeonSeries-ATIKMDAGhasstoppedrespondingerrormessages.aspx
"The issue occurs when the Timeout Detection and Recovery (TDR) feature available in Windows Vista and Windows 7 detects that the graphics card (GPU) has not responded within a predetermined period of time and reinitializes it with the Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) to prevent the need to reboot. There is no single cause for a TDR event to be triggered."

 

[gramboh]

This is a well known issue, especially with NV 5xx series cards. I've been getting it ever since the 280.xx series driver came out on my system, up to and including the newest betas.

The errors only happen on desktop use, never in gaming with my card at load. I have all CPU power saving features disabled on my old Q6700. GPU configuration is stock power/clocks wise right now.

 

[amenx]

I recall I had that issue on Vista, esp early Vista. I dont recall seeing it even once in my 2 1/2 years of using Win7. Nvidia user here.

 

[RobertR1]

Bless this thread! My system hasn't rebooted since I disbaled speedstep in the bios. I hope it stays that way! Thanks.