“Display driver stopped responding and has recovered” error.

Anonymous
2009-10-13T16:38:34+00:00
  • Running Windows 7, 32-bi,t on a Lenovo W500. Display Driver: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650.
  • The error message (“display driver stopped responding & has recovered”) follows a system freeze, a short blackout. Then everything works fine.
  • Downloaded the most current driver from the company's Web site.
  • Seeemd to work for a day, but now I'm getting the same behavior.

Crabby Office Lady

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Devices and drivers

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2012-01-27T00:10:30+00:00

Hello Crabby Office Lady,

This error can happen because of an outdated video driver, to many programs running at one time or even high CPU activity. There is a link to a KB article on the following post that gives more info on the issue and helps to fix it, see:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/error-display-driver-stopped-responding-and-has/1b6c2b8b-b0a7-49d9-bc3b-e9cc98d51004

L.D.

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  1. Anonymous
    2011-04-23T05:49:22+00:00

    Mine is an MSI running Windows 7 Home Premium with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730. 

    I have the same error message "Display driver stopped....." after crashing for up to 10 seconds.  This problem happens EVERYTIME I update IE to IE 9.

    My only solution is to restore WIndows to an earlier restore point BEFORE I installed IE 9.  That solves the problem.  And so, in my case, the problem persists ONLY if I update IE to IE 9.  (And I tried this at least three times, each time hoping that Microsoft had issued a patch addressing this problem!)

    Does anybody have the same problem?

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  2. Anonymous
    2011-04-24T16:14:41+00:00

    I have the same problem on my PC...

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-04-25T16:16:52+00:00

    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.

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  4. Anonymous
    2011-04-25T17:38:45+00:00

    thank you for this reply. this makes a lot of sense because this problem only happens to me when i'm using apps with hardware acceleration enabled and it seems like an under-voltage issue even though i have a 750w PSU. I was afraid there was something wrong with my ATI Radeon HD 5870 that i paid a pretty penny for.   Maybe someone who knows more than I do about tweaking voltage setting that can come up with a safe fix for this? although disabling hardware acceleration fixes the problem, the video would be more clear with hardware acceleration enabled. i would like to be able to use hardware acceleration.

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