Video freezes, nvidia 8800GT, probable driver issue

Another affected user here, sadly I have less to add, except that, although there are a few lucky people who are not facing this issue, most of us do. I have been hands-on 2 friends' computers, one with the exact same hardware as mine (XFX 8800 GTS on Win7 Ultimate x64... except for the fact that myKingston RAM is Hyper-X and his is not) and the other one with better and newer hardware (260GTX on Win7 Ultimate x86). Asus Striker Extreme motherboards for first 2 machines, Striker Extreme II in the newest. More than enough cooling, machines clean inside (physically and logically), and still the symptoms are there and vary on each machine.

As per me, I do get the computer freezes, the horizontal lines all around, and the eventual blackouts and driver restarts, as much as some BSOD's featuring fancy crash-dumps. I do know this one would clearly and commonly point out to a hw issue, but it is not. When I first installed Win7 on my box (the exact same day it was released) and got the nVidia drivers that were currently in Windows Update, everything was just fine (I needed to manually install the PhysX drivers from the nVidia home page, but besides that everything worked perfect). Smooth. I was delighted with Windows 7. One day I'm still regretting, I decided to take a look at those video enhancements that nVidia promised in their new WHQL'd drivers. Some time after installing them, I started getting those horizontal lines on the screen, and since then everything has been worse all the time. What I've tried to do:

• update to latest BIOS - useless
• try several nVidia BETA and WHQL'd drivers - useless
• physically cleaned up the inside of my box, re-seated video card and RAM - useless
• reinstalled Win7, tried the Windows Update drivers (currently the 18x.dunno version). Installed NOTHING else at all (video codecs, media players, games...). Started browsing some files to move them to a different partition - there! horizontal lines everywhere, screen blackout... back once again.
• removed nVidia drivers. Removed the nVidia drivers installed automatically by Windows Update after rebooting. Disabled Windows Update services and rebooted again - performed smooth and perfect for DAYS. No 3D accelleration at all, no cool Aero visual effects... and also no lines, no blackouts, no crashes. Even played the games I was able to try without accelleration (e.g Plants vs. Zombies, and an old Heroes of Might and Magic version), watched videos, downloaded stuff, opened countless browser windows (Chrome, Firefox, IE...), countless windows at a time just for testint, and NOTHING ever crashed.

Call me crazy, but I think it all clearly points out to a driver issue, happening ever since nVidia deployed some kind of "video enhancement" that just kills something in the Windows 7 kernel, especially (but not only) in x64 editions. As per me, the next (and hopefully last) troubleshooting step I'll perform is to kiss DirectX10 goodbye, backup everything I want to keep, and roll back to my old Windows XP Pro SP3 x86. I'm not really in the mud for doing it now, as I'm a bit fed up with this issue and everything involving my computer right now, but I'll let you know as soon as I do and check for a few days. In the meantime, let's hope for nVidia to release a stable version of their drivers, so we can use all the so announced features we've paid for.

DarkShadowSwE So it seems to mainly concern steam games , might be something with theri graphic motor that intefer , anyone had any game besides a steam game crash ?

SUSPICIOUS THINGS IN MY PROBLEM

8800GTLEFT FOR DEAD 2WINDOWS 7 64 BIT ENTERPRISE

I am seeing these three things strongly associated with this problem.

My Error specifically

Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered. Error 4101.

The screen jerks several times, and sometimes crashes the game, sometimes it does not. The error log always says that same error.

****Premise:

Ok, a week or so ago Nvidia released the new 196.75 driver, then recalled it because it was killing video cards (limiting fan speed and overheating).  It killed my 9800GT.  I HAD a 9800GT and 8800GT in SLI (DID have two 8800GTs, one died and got replaced with 9800GT).  Since the 9800GT died I took it out and put the 8800GT in the main slot and kept using the faulty driver (at the time I didn't know).  Used the driver for a few days until I found out it was killing cards.  Reverted to 196.21 and now LFD2 crashes on average every 30 mins.  Sometimes 20, sometimes an hr, but generally at least once every 30 mins.

Rig:

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz 6MB L2 Cach

EVGA 132-CK-NF78-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI

OCZ 780 Watt

Reaper HPC Edition 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRA

XFX 8800GT Alpha Dog Edition

All the solutions I have tried do not work and people say my card may be bad.

I have tried several previous nvidia drivers

Disabling Windows Aero

Setting my max CPU cores to 2

Changing in game settings to all low settings

I have also read that later Nvidia drivers have fixed this problem, and all the forums I read are back before Win7 was released, which is also odd that I am having this problem now.  It looks like it's pointing to the Source engine from LFD2, the 8800GT, Nvidia, and Win7.  These are common points.

My 3D stereoscopic is off, I just tried disabling the service, I will see if this works...

DarkShadowSwE So it seems to mainly concern steam games , might be something with theri graphic motor that intefer , anyone had any game besides a steam game crash ?

SUSPICIOUS THINGS IN MY PROBLEM

8800GTLEFT FOR DEAD 2WINDOWS 7 64 BIT ENTERPRISE

I am seeing these three things strongly associated with this problem.

My Error specifically

Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered. Error 4101.

The screen jerks several times, and sometimes crashes the game, sometimes it does not. The error log always says that same error.

****Premise:

Ok, a week or so ago Nvidia released the new 196.75 driver, then recalled it because it was killing video cards (limiting fan speed and overheating).  It killed my 9800GT.  I HAD a 9800GT and 8800GT in SLI (DID have two 8800GTs, one died and got replaced with 9800GT).  Since the 9800GT died I took it out and put the 8800GT in the main slot and kept using the faulty driver (at the time I didn't know).  Used the driver for a few days until I found out it was killing cards.  Reverted to 196.21 and now LFD2 crashes on average every 30 mins.  Sometimes 20, sometimes an hr, but generally at least once every 30 mins.

Rig:

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz 6MB L2 Cach

EVGA 132-CK-NF78-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI

OCZ 780 Watt

Reaper HPC Edition 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRA

XFX 8800GT Alpha Dog Edition

All the solutions I have tried do not work and people say my card may be bad.

I have tried several previous nvidia drivers

Disabling Windows Aero

Setting my max CPU cores to 2

Changing in game settings to all low settings

I have also read that later Nvidia drivers have fixed this problem, and all the forums I read are back before Win7 was released, which is also odd that I am having this problem now.  It looks like it's pointing to the Source engine from LFD2, the 8800GT, Nvidia, and Win7.  These are common points.

My 3D stereoscopic is off, I just tried disabling the service, I will see if this works...

WLooking at their forums, it should become apparent that nvidia does not care about problems their customers are having. Therefore, I have to turn to people they might listen to or work with to solve such problems - Windows and Microsoft.

I am running Windows 7 Ultimate x64 (Retail). My video card is a nVidia Geforce 8800 GT.

The issue is that the video is locking up, flickering, freezing, and even sometimes causing the "blue screen of death" - The problem is widely reported, and is also widely misdiagnosed as overheating. The card is not overheating, let me be quite clear on this. The card is also not old and ready to die (Another common misdiagnosis by techs who would brush difficult problems away.)

The issue is: Whatever nVidia has done with their drivers, they do not get along with Windows 7. The issue, if you search the web, is exclusively a Windows 7 problem.

I saw an article earlier regarding something that was implemented in Vista that would detect if the video drivers were crashing, and attempt to close and restart them without rebooting. I can not remember what this feature is called, nor can I find that info again (I found it while at work and did not save the URL sadly) - but it certainly seems like that's what is going on.  The video will flicker while I am in a game, the game will freeze, and then after a second, the screen will go black, then the game will come back up, but at lower graphic detail. Evenually, the game will do the same thing again, and go back to full detail.

That's just a theory, though, of course.

I have tried the latest nvidia drivers, as well as the drivers from Windows update. I have not yet tried the nvidia beta drivers, but have read from other users that there was no luck in using them.  Some users reported luck when using the default drivers of WIndows 7, or the Windows Update drivers, but I had no luck, and many others also didn't.  I may try rolling back to some much older Vista drivers to see what happens.

In any case, my purpose here was less to get an answer, and more to really just spread the word more about this problem. Maybe a Microsoft employee will see this post and report it to someone who can have their people talk to nvidia's people, so to speak, because nvidia people do not frequent their forums. There are threads there with issues unsolved from over 2 years ago, and those are similar to some other issues we still have today with TV-Out. But that's another topic entirely.

What you are describing is a TDR error- I think it stands for Timeout Detection and Recovery. This has been a problem for at least 3 years and it is not limited to nVidia. It is surely a driver issue, and honestly, I think it is also a Windows compatibility issue.