How did i solved my "nvidia drivers stopped working and has recovered" problem.

[Razor33]

Hello to all, today i decided to share this since i bet there are many others who have this black screen problem: "nvidia drivers stopped working and has recovered" when they try to play games using Nvidia video cards thanks to the "bad" made drivers lately.

Personally i tried everything from upgrading and downgrading drivers to overclock and under-clock the GPU and nothing worked for me.

From what did i hear and read these problems are mostly because of the power saving the drivers try to make/change on the Nvidia video cards so i tried to give more power to the card using these 3 steps witch "worked" for me at least till now for the last two months:

1) Start --> Control Panel -> Power Options: Change to "High Performance" instead of the default "Balanced".
After this click "change plan settings" then click "change advanced power settings" and in this menu click PCI Express , "Link State Power Managment" and make sure this is set to "Off".

2) Open "Nvidia Control Panel" (C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\Control Panel Client) and at the option "Manage 3D settings" at "Power Managment Mode" make sure you change to "Prefer Maximum Performance" instead of the default "adaptive" option.

3) Right click the World of Warcraft icon (or your game icon) and select "Properties".
Select the "Compatability" tab and check the box for "Disable Desktop Composition" and click Ok.

After all these steps are done i suggest to reboot the PC so everything can apply good.

I don't know if this will solve your problems too but i certainly hope so, and i hope i was able to help out some of the players and boters out there stressed by this problem same as i was



Note: I solved this problem in Windows 7 ultimate, no idea if it works same way in others versions of Windows too but is worth a try.

[Novamas90]

I had to replace my GPU because of that problem, if I ever build a new pc I'll use my old GPU and try your sollution, thanks for the info

[Hypex]

thanks for the information, took so long to figure this out

[Piju]

Hmpf, didn't work for me, still getting these annoying messages... but thanks for the try though

[Razor33]

Hmpf, didn't work for me, still getting these annoying messages... but thanks for the try though

Hey Piju, try steps 1 and 3 as they are described and on step 2 try to :
Nvidia Control Panel , and under "Adjust image settings with preview" check the "Use my preference emphasizing" and draw the bar to "Performance" if is not already like that, then click apply. I have friends who solved their problem with this kind of step 2. (but make sure you did steps 1 and 3 correctly also )

Also if is still not working a temporary fix can be to draw that bar to "Balanced" then click "Apply" then draw it back to "Performance" and click again "Apply", but you have to do this everytime these errors start to annoy you.. (prob every time you reset your PC).

[Swindleboss]

Really helpful guide for people with this problem I have an nVidia card myself so this might come in handy one day

[Razor33]

Really helpful guide for people with this problem I have an nVidia card myself so this might come in handy one day

Glad i could help

For people still unable to solve this problem with the methods i mentioned, you can also try these steps here described here by Microsoft "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered" error in Windows 7 or Windows Vista

[rebcabarb]

I would use whatever you made if it made something i do daily easier.

[Zobz]

great for people with these graphic cards problems

[x4kep]

I solved it when I changed my RAM, check for that as well guys

[azza]

Only step 2 in those steps will do anything that will affect the driver error.


95% of those driver errors are caused by two things its either a voltage error or a hardware conflict the other 5% are things like ram and corrupted drivers.

Voltage errors are pretty common especially with cards gtx 400 series and above get the free program called "Hardware Monitor" and run it with wow when you get your driver error if the voltage listed on the video card is below 1.0v the problem is most likley voltage and follow the instructions listed above in step 2 if the voltage still drops and causes the error after than you will need to install a program to regulate it Eg. msi afterburner (works on all nvidia cards).

sound hardware make up the bulk of the rest of reasons this error occurs (its what cased my problems) and yes you might ask yourself what has sound hardware have to do with video cards well it has to do with the fact there is a sound card built into all video cards that contain a HDMI port.

At this point you have 2 options to fix the problem.

1. IF you use your HDMI port to connect your display device which also supplies the audio (most common with people who play on TV's) then you will need to disable your onboard audio device and it should clear up the problem.

Edit: you can tell if your video card is the audio device by going into control panel then the sound application if the device with the green tick next to it is either the name of your TV or says "Nvidia HDMI Output" then your video card is your audio device.

2. if you use the onboard sound device or a USB headset or sound device you will need to disable the nvidia sound driver to do this reinstall your video drivers select custom install then untick the HD Audio driver the tick the "perform a clean installation" option then install the drivers and restart your pc.




EDIT: also if you get the error before getting into a game or as soon as you start playing theres a chance you may have Bitcoin mining malware on your pc which can also cause the error to check if you have this malware installed check the c:\ root directory for a folder called Tempory (not Temp) the look inside for a file called IEHighutil.exe if the file is in there you have bitcoin malware installed.

its becoming alot more common atm and isnt detected by most forms of anti virus software its mostly found in downloaded game isos fortunately its REALLY easy to remove simply go into task manager and endtask on IEHighutil.exe then just delete the tempory folder from your c:\ root folder and its fixed.

[Winfy]

Really helpful, worked for me. Thanks mate! I'll be sure to share

[Razor33]

First of all big thanks to Azza and + 3 rep for helping WoW players (and all having this problem) in solving it
And now back here with a useful link :

"Display driver stopped responding and has recovered" error in Windows 7 or Windows Vista

A fix in registry witch may also fix the problem + some more info regarding this.

[Razor33]

First of all big thanks to Azza and + 3 rep for helping WoW players (and all having this problem) in solving it
And now back here with a useful link :

"Display driver stopped responding and has recovered" error in Windows 7 or Windows Vista

A fix in registry witch may also fix the problem + some more info regarding this.


Edit: More five possible ways to fix these problems I found browsing the internet witch may help greatly :
1) "turning off hardware acceleration in your browser"
For internet explorer : click Tools --> Internet Options --> Advanced --> Accelerated Graphics --> Check the square "use software rendering instead of gpu rendering" --> Restart your browser for effects to apply.
For Mozila Firefox click on the orange Firefox button and select "Options" --> Go to "Advanced" tab and disable "Use hardware acceleration when available"
Click ok and restart the browser

2) In Nvidia Control Panel -> 3D Settings -> Set PhysX configuration -> Select a Physx processor -> choose your graphics card instead of leaving it on auto-select.

3) Make a clean installation of NVidia drivers unchecking all options with 3D Vision (IF you are not using it)

4) Check if you have RAM problems with a program like "memtest" and replace or remove the faulty ram sticks

5) Disable Windows Aero (only if all others ways didn't worked alone or all combined together since this will make your windows look classic way and more ugly )

Many credits for all these steps go to this Microsoft forum I found and read here :
Nvidia Display Driver Has Stopped Responding and Successfully Recovered
You can also find here more possible fixes witch may work for you if anything Described in the initial post or by Azza or here in my edit don't work for you.

Personally here no more similar problems and I used like half of all described things in this thread
Good luck fixing yours without the need to replace the video card , the power source , the RAM or any others components !

[Firstbay]

Good hints