"Display driver stopped responding and has recovered" (Epic Length)

[tehgooch]

Hi everyone,

I've been having major problems with my video cards lately. I bought two 8800GTs back in January and after some initial problems I got the system working properly :) . My current specs are:

CPU: Q6600 (At stock until these problems are fixed) w/ D-TEK Fuzions CPU Water Block + Nozzle Kit
Motherboard: eVGA 780i w/ ViperJohn 780i NB WB + Mosfet Coolers (I have one Antec Spot-Cool blowing on the mosfet heatsinks on high, and one blowing on the memory on high).
Memory: 4x Crucial Ballistix DDR2-1066 1GB (with aforementioned spot-cool blowing on them, although I am planning on getting the OCZ RAM cooler to see if it is better)
VGA: 2x eVGA 8800GT 512MB in SLI w/ 2x EK FC88 WB
NIC: Intel PRO/1000 Pt Gigabit NIC PCI-E
Sound: Currently using onboard since I think there is something wrong with my X-Fi XtremeGamer as the driver crashes when I try to install it. Everything else seems to work fine, other than the problem I will describe.
Pump: Swiftek MCP655 at full speed
Radiator: HW Labs GTX480 w/ 4x Panaflo 70CFM fans
Case: Silverstone TJ07 (Radiator is mounted on the bottom with industrial-strength velcro. 2x120mm Yate Loon fans are installed blowing air upwards out of the case. No 92mm fans are installed as I have the two 120mm bay converter fans for intake. I may consider changing them back to the stock Silverstone fans in they blow more air. I just had the Yate Loons lying around as I had planned on getting the Pa 120.3, but that was out of stock so I got the 480. with the 70CFM fans installed the Silverstones probably won't be noticable over them.)
HDD: 2x WD Raptor 74GB in RAID0, 3x Seagate 7200.11 500GB in RAID5. Mounted in two Silverstone bay converters w/ 120mm intake fans in the 5.25" bays.
Tubing: 1/2" ID Tygon tubing, w/ various barbs.
OS: Vista Ultimate x64 SP1
PSU: Silverstone Zeuz 750W. One of the GPU power connectors has a crushed pin on the power supply side. It still fits in most of the way and seems to power the card, so I rolled with it. This may be a big no-no. Please let me know.

I think that covers everything. I ran the Vista installer with 2GB RAM installed and applied the hotfix for 4GB. I have this problem with the latest nVidia drivers as well as Omega drivers. Currently running Omega drivers.

As a side note I have encountered a BSOD relating to my network adapter driver before (STOP 0x1E, e1e6032e.sys), and I have uninstalled it and reinstalled the latest version. That is the only bluescreen I have gotten on this install of Windows. I have not had any more BSODs since then (this was around a week ago). This may or may not be related, not sure.

As another side note I think I may have damaged my X-Fi sound card. I accidentally scratched the PCB when I installed a card reader (had to remove the sound card to get to the plug. Thanks for putting the headers in weird spots, eVGA). This may or may not be related, not sure.

Another side note... I only recently installed the ViperJohn block (last weekend) and had been running the stock heatsink which was really bad. My MCP was regularly above 80*C and the NB wasn't much better. That was with a full-speed Spot-Cool pointed directly at the heatsink. I shudder to think what the mosfets endured. This was with stock speeds. I didn't dare O/C with that much NB heat. CPU is ~30*C idle, ~40*C full load. GPUs are similiar, as well as NB now. This may or may not be related, not sure.

All parts were bought from NCIX with the exception of the EK GPU blocks as they were not available at the time.

So on to the problem:

I constantly get a "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered - Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered." at random intervals, but especially when playing games. I have a feeling this may be related to SP1 since I did not have this problem before, but I am also thinking it may be that the high heat caused by the bad stock cooler on the eVGA board may have damaged it. I didn't see any useful info in the Event Viewer, but if you need some info to help please ask.

ALSO:

The problem goes away for a time if I completely shut down the computer and shut of the switch on the PSU for a time. If I leave it off overnight it will work for about a week. A few minutes off buys me days / hours.

UPDATE:

I tried plugging my second video card into another 12v rail and there is no change. Could my power supply be bad? Or underpowered?

Again, thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

[burebista]

A long read.
And nVidia statement about this:

Some Windows Vista users have reported that their systems are displaying an error message that says: "Display driver stopped responding, but has successfully recovered." This is called a Timeout Detection and Recovery error message.

Timeout Detection and Recovery (TDR) is a new feature of Windows Vista that attempts to detect problematic situations and recover to a functional desktop without forcing a reboot. Hangs can occur when the GPU is processing intensive graphics operations, typically during gameplay, and nothing is being updated on the monitor. To the user it appears that the system is frozen with no resolution to the problem; in previous operating systems users generally had to wait a few seconds and then reboot.

The TDR error message "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered" lets the user know that the NVIDIA display driver (specifically the "nvlddmkm.sys" file) has been re-initialized and the GPU is reset without requiring a reboot. The only visible artifact from the recovery is a screen flicker, the result of a screen redraw. Note that some older Microsoft DirectX applications may render to a black screen at the end of the TDR, requiring the user to restart these applications.

TDRs are not specific to a single driver problem, and can occur for a variety of reasons. When they occur, diagnostic information is collected in the form of a debug report that is sent to Microsoft through the Online Crash Analysis (OCA) mechanism if the user opts to provide feedback.

NVIDIA encourages users to submit their own bug reports via the NVIDIA Vista Quality Assurance Program, using the keyword "TDR" in the description of the problem.

We understand that many users have expressed frustration with this issue, and we apologize for the inconvenience. Since the NVIDIA v101.41 beta driver release, NVIDIA has been fixing many TDR issues reported by users. Our software team is currently preparing a new driver which will dramatically reduce the number of TDR errors that users have reported on the forums. Thank you for your patience.

[CraigHf]

I recently had a similar problem. Nvidia beta driver version 174.74 managed to fix my issue...you may wanna try that.

Grab it here
GeForce Release 174

They also released version 175.12. I haven't tried that one, but you may wanna give it a shot !?

here
GeForce Release 175

[tehgooch]

Thanks, CraigHf, I'll give those a try.

[CraigHf]

Originally Posted by tehgooch

Thanks, CraigHf, I'll give those a try.

Np dude ! Keep us updated !

[CraigHf]

Originally Posted by CraigHf

GeForce Release 175

Shoot... Sorry man, just realized that one pointed to the vista 32-bits version. 64-bits versioin is here GeForce Release 175

[tehgooch]

Heh, I figured that out pretty quick so no biggie. I've had one crash (hard this time) since I installed the 175 beta driver. Going to give the 174 a shot after a few days.

[tehgooch]

Neither driver helped, they only made it worse! I'm back to the WHQL drivers and it still seems to be getting worse. I am going to email eVGA and see what they have to say.

[Cheator]

I had this problem with my lappy's 8600GT. Had to hack the drivers and update them but it fixed it, it seems. Are these cards running at stock? one at a time maybe?

[tehgooch]

Well, I think I'm going to try a better PSU. I tried some drivers from eVGA (169.44) that they suggested (they also suggested DriverSweeper, which looks like a nice alternative to DriverCleaner, which never seemed to work well under Vista), and am no better off. I think the 750W Silverstone I have may be a little too weak for what I have (3 7200RPM HDDs, 2 10K RPM HDDs, dual GPUs, power-hungry quad-core CPU). I've decided on the Corsair CMPSU-1000HX (Yes Kilowatt). I figure it should be able to handle anything I throw at it, plus I like the 140mm fan better. It can draw air in from my rad that is just being blocked right now (probably insignificant as the rad handles what I have now like a champ). I can get it for $244 so I might as well go for it.

.. I need to get a less expensive hobby. Poor Vana has been getting ripped apart pretty much every weekend since I got her .