“Display driver stopped responding and has recovered” error.

2013-Jan: Same issue on a Windows 7 32-bit Dell with an EVGA GeForce 6200 video card (Nvidia chipset) in an AGP 8x slot and the latest applicable driver 307.74 installed.  Yes; an old motherboard.

Oddly, this issue was occurring prior to installing this "new" (newly purchased) card. I was surprised to see the error reappear today.

Have a few apps open, at the time issue occurred: Excel, QuickBooks, Outlook, Firefox.  Not very CPU-intensive apps.

This is frustrating...

I got the same problem with my HP, and here is how I fixed it.

If it keeps freezing on you and wouldn't let you do anything for more than 30 seconds then restart your machine in Safe Mode.

Then go to your Device Mananger -> right click on my computer ( or Computer) and choose Properties, then click on Device Manager.

Click on the arrow to show the installed driver.  Right click on the driver and choose Update Driver Software.  Select "Browse My Computer For Driver Software". Next, select "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer".  Then choose the older version of the driver to install. In my case, I installed the original version that was installed when I purchased my laptop.  I believe that the problem is the updated version isn't compatible with my hardware.  I hope this help.

HP Pavillion Notebook

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit (upgraded from XP)

ATI Radeon HD 3200

Have been dogged by this problem for years (since upgrade to Win 7) and tried many other fixes to no avail.  This is the one that appears to have corrected the problem for me (I also un-clicked the 'enable power play option' in the ATI ccc as per one other poster).  I was just about to give up on this old laptop and now hope to get a few more miles out of it.  Thanks for posting this solution!

"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. "

I'm having the same problems with one pc with an Nvidia GeForce GT 640 - all drivers are fully up to date.  I did suspect that it was power fluctuations causing the issue. I rebuilt the computer from scratch reinstalling Windows 7 (32bit) with fully up to date drivers etc. I even upgraded the PSU from a 650watt one to a 900watt one just in case the problem lied there - but this made no difference.

I've come to the same conclusion that it is a Win 7 power management issue and one that unfortunately cannot be solved by changing the advanced Power Options settings.

I haven't yet found a solution, neither have I found third party tools that can fix this - so suggestions are very welcome.  My next step is upgrading the pc to Windows 7 64bit... fingers crossed.

No solution, or fix,  but a couple of observations -

If your 650W power supply was a good quality it would have been more than enough for

a  GT 640 .  Too much actually. The GT 640 only requires a minimum of 350W.

A 400/420 W quality power supply would allow plenty of headroom.

What you have now, assuming the power supply is a good quality one and actually does produce

900W,  is far too much available power.

• A power supply operates most efficiently from 50- about 80% of it's capacity.

When it runs below 50% is starts drawing more power and creates more heat. The same is

true at the other end of the scale.

Your system would barely be using 50% of a 650W psu under full load. When not playing games

or otherwise stressing the full system it would be running well below 50% capacity.

Regarding cheap power supplies vs quality power supplies.

Cheap power supplies tend not to deliver stable voltage. It takes very little change to cause a

cpu or gpu to lag, and lag is what the TDR is all about.

So, in some cases TDR can be a result of power instability.

The fluctuations do not just come from inadequate power, they also come from cheap capacitors,

coils and other voltage regulating components.

Windows 32bit vs 64bit is very unlikely to be a source of TDR. 

If you have 4GB or more RAM you need a 64bit OS to make use of all the RAM.

A 32bit OS can only access around 3.25GB total memory, including graphics card VRAM.

• While the GT640 comes with 2GB VRAM, is would struggle to process more than 1GB data, so

if you are running a 32bit OS, and graphics is using 1GB VRAM you should still be fine.

The only way you would have a problem is if you had a lot of other large files open when

running the game which may push the total RAM past the limits of the 32bit OS. This should not

be done in any case when playing a game, as it will lower the performance of the graphics card

on relation to system RAM requirements for the game

.