Display driver NVIDIA Windows Kernal Mode Driver, Version 388.31 stopped responding and has successfully recovered.

[hishara1999]

Hey everyone.

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate Service Pack 1
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-G41M-Combo
GPU: ASUS GeForce GTX 660
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650
Ram: Kingston DDR3 ValueRAM 1333MHz 8GB ( 2 x 4GB )
PSU: Unbranded generic 500W
HDD Primary: Hitachi Deskstar 250GB
HDD Secondary: Western Digital 1TB

I recently purchased an Asus GeForce GTX 660 ( GTX660-DC2-2GD5 ) graphics card for my old gaming pc and installed the latest Game Ready driver, as recommended from official Nvidia drivers download site. The driver seems to be OK only in first day, then I started experiencing problems with it.

Driver Version: GeForce Game Ready Driver, 388.31 - WHQL

I am experiencing following problems at least once a day:

When I play a game ( GPU intensive or not ), a loud buzzing noise ( Drrrrrrrrr ) occurs and game freezes, I cannot return to desktop using shortcut keys, only option I have to hard reset system using PSU switch. This not happened after I disabled Nvidia Digital Audio in sound devices as I found it in an answer to a question in this site. But I cannot sure if it did solve the issue permanently.

When I use the PC normally for other tasks, ( not for playing any game ), CPU usage goes high, display suddenly goes black and after 1 to 2 seconds, display comes back and Windows notifies me that a driver crash occurred with the error message in title. This issue started to happen today. This happened only once yet.

These are all for now. When I boot this PC, only one single short beep ( Award BIOS ) comes from my newly installed motherboard speaker telling that system is normal.

The graphics card is still under 3 years warranty and I don't suspect it.

What should I do to solve this issue? Should I re-install graphics drivers after uninstalling them using DDU? Or what else?
Are Nvidia graphics drivers starting from version 341.12 are garbage?

Thanks in advance.

 

[TechnoStyle]

Try DDU method.
If latest driver fails, you can try older drivers with DDU method again.
If they fail and you are sure about other components are stable, RMA your graphics card.

 

[hishara1999]

Try DDU method.
If latest driver fails, you can try older drivers with DDU method again.
If they fail and you are sure about other components are stable, RMA your graphics card.

I will try it. But unlike you say, I cannot sure about all other components, specially the PSU.
It is a cheap unbranded one.
But, as system starts normally and there are no Blue Screens, PSU doesn't the problem here.
GPU temperatures are also OK. If there's a GPU problem, why Windows say it's a driver problem?
And GPU is working fine. How can I say this is a GPU problem clearly?

UPDATE: New problem happened just now. When I am surfing the web using this PC, suddenly system became unresponsive and screen remained same. Nothing changed even after five minutes and I hard reset and restarted it again. Now I am feeling this is mostly a driver problem, not the graphics card. I will uninstall this driver right now.

 

[cherry blossoms]

Checking your power supply is still warranted. A cheap 500 W power supply may not actually be in reality anywhere close to 500W, may be failing, or may not be providing sufficient amperage on the +12v rail, especially if it is a split rail design.

 

[hishara1999]

Checking your power supply is still warranted. A cheap 500 W power supply may not actually be in reality anywhere close to 500W, may be failing, or may not be providing sufficient amperage on the +12v rail, especially if it is a split rail design.

This power supply has two +12V rails, and one each rail claims to provide 20A current.
I will run the DDU and reinstall driver again, and will post results back here.

UPDATE: I uninstalled current graphics driver using DDU and graphics card started to show as 14MB.

 

[cherry blossoms]

If I am not mistaken, the recommended power for a GTX 660 is in the 24 amp range on +12v. You will need to isolate which rail powers what, and see if you can mix them to obtain stability as a troubleshooting step. For a Tier one power supply you might get away with being slightly underpowered, for a low tier power supply, it's just asking for trouble, since they often don't provide what the label says, and deteriorate over time.

Do you have another power supply to test with that provides above the rated amperage on a single rail?

 

[hishara1999]

Do you have another power supply to test with that provides above the rated amperage on a single rail?

I have another one, but it is 400W and not enough to power this graphics card.
It only has one 16A +12V rail. And are you sure this is a PSU issue, and not a driver issue?

Now I am in the process of reinstalling same driver after DDU uninstall.

 

[cherry blossoms]

Nothing is guaranteed with hardware that age hishara. Crashing the video driver often seems to be a power delivery or heat issue, though I see that more with overclocking. Cleaning out your drivers is a good thing to do, yes. Just pointing out that instability is possible. Hoping you are running at stock speeds and nothing overclocked. Make sure you have good airflow also

If you need a stress test for looking at the GPU, Furmark may be helpful.

 

[hishara1999]

Nothing is guaranteed with hardware that age hishara. Crashing the video driver often seems to be a power delivery or heat issue, though I see that more with overclocking. Cleaning out your drivers is a good thing to do, yes. Just pointing out that instability is possible. Hoping you are running at stock speeds and nothing overclocked. Make sure you have good airflow also

If you need a stress test for looking at the GPU, Furmark may be helpful.

I will try them. Now I reinstalled same driver without other components ( only graphics driver ) and it still caused screen to stuck at same. So I uninstalled it and will try with 347.88 graphics driver.

 

[ddferrari]

I will try them. Now I reinstalled same driver without other components ( only graphics driver ) and it still caused screen to stuck at same. So I uninstalled it and will try with 347.88 graphics driver.

Why are you using such old drivers? The latest for your card is 388.31

I agree with others that this definitely sounds like a power supply issue. Decent 500W PSUs can be had for $30 USD.

 

[hishara1999]

I agree with others that this definitely sounds like a power supply issue. Decent 500W PSUs can be had for $30 USD.

I also think so. But if this is a PSU issue, why motherboard doesn't give power supply failure beep sound when booting?

UPDATE: Crashing not happened yet with downgraded graphics driver.

Is there any way I can check if a graphics or any other driver is stable?

 

[cherry blossoms]

If you need a stress test for looking at the GPU, Furmark may be helpful.

 

[hishara1999]

If you need a stress test for looking at the GPU, Furmark may be helpful.

I will try using FurMark and will post results here.

 

[hishara1999]

I ran FurMark with a resolution of 1600x900 and 8x MSAA Anti-aliasing for 2 hours and 30 minutes, it went fine and system not crashed or restarted. But I did this test using downgraded graphics driver. It seems that driver is stable.

I will also do same with latest driver and post results here.

 

[hishara1999]

I installed GeForce Game Ready Driver version 388.13 instead latest version 388.31 and system not crashed yet.

 

[cherry blossoms]

Good to know hishara, hopefully was just a temporary glitch then.

 

[hishara1999]

Good to know hishara, hopefully was just a temporary glitch then.

OK, I will immediately post here if something goes wrong.

 

[hishara1999]

I just upgraded to new latest driver version 388.43 and added TDR Delay registry key in LKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM, then crashing problem gone. Now PC sleeps and wakes up fast than before. Graphics card is working fine. Thanks for the nice help.