Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and successfully recovered.

acorn_

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Oct 28, 2017
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First of all, i'm not too sure that this belongs into the GPUs subforum but it seemed to me like a GPU issue. A few days ago, i noticed, while playing GTA IV on my ASUS UX550VD laptop with an i7-7700HQ, 16GBs of DDR4-2400 and a GTX 1050, that the game stopped responding, shortly after, my screen went black, it turned on again, GTA IV shows a white screen and in Task Manager it is shown as inactive. I could not kill it in any way, even by trying to forcefully overwrite the affected sectors in RAM, so i tried to reboot it, but it got stuck on the "Rebooting..." screen so i had to hold the power button for a few seconds for it to finally reboot. Of course this seemed weird to me, so i tried again. I was thinking maybe the mission im doing, "No way on the subway", would cause this, but after a while of driving around, the same thing happened. Had to force-shutdown it, not even Alt-Ctrl-Delete would do something but i could, weirdly enough, still open my IDE, browser, and do pretty much anything i'd normally do as a web developer. This couldn't be a coincidence... I looked into Event Viewer, and at first i didn't find anything, no "Application Hang" or anything in the Software tab, but then i looked into the System tab and noticed a "Display" warning... Here's the event XML:
Code:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
  <System>
    <Provider Name="Display" /> 
    <EventID Qualifiers="0">4101</EventID> 
    <Level>3</Level> 
    <Task>0</Task> 
    <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords> 
    <TimeCreated SystemTime="2018-05-18T15:27:58.773811700Z" /> 
    <EventRecordID>5450</EventRecordID> 
    <Channel>System</Channel> 
    <Computer>DESKTOP-L4052I8</Computer> 
    <Security /> 
  </System>
  <EventData>
    <Data>nvlddmkm</Data> 
    <Data /> 
  </EventData>
</Event>
So i ran a memory check, Furmark for an hour, disabled "PCI Energy Management" in Windows energy options, deinstalled my display drivers, ran DDU, reinstalled drivers, repeated all of it in safe mode, basically everything you can imagine. No memory errors, no "real" overheating (maxed out at 85°C after a while of CPU burner and 1920x1080 Furmark, but my room temp is 27°C), but GTA IV still doesn't want to work. The laptop does have Optimus, but GTA IV ran fine for a week and i haven't done any driver updates when it stopped working, but updating drivers didn't fix it either. I also noticed that Electron applications which use hardware acceleration cause my PC to freeze, the cursor can be moved and for example i can still pause and resume Youtube videos, but the video doesn't update. Only when i shut the lid and open it again it works normally, however this only fixed it for the Electron app freezing thing. It wouldn't even go into sleep mode when GTA crashed. Here's a dxdiag dump: https://acorn-thats.me/dxdiag.txt and the msinfo32 dump: https://acorn-thats.me/msinfo.txt, tell me if you need more info or other dumps... Also, don't bash me, i just switched my language from german to english so the dumps are english, i'm not sure if they'll be fully english. Google Translate will suffice i guess? I mean, it looked pretty english to me. Maybe events won't be translated? I dont know.
 

toshibitsu

Distinguished
You could have been putting excess stress on the gpu and it probably overheated. The thermal paste on it could be worn out. Firstly, I'd suggest using some compressed air and blowing out any possible dust buildup. I'd also keep the laptop on a cooling pad while you're gaming. If you have to know how & feel up to it, I'd also suggest opening up the laptop and replacing the thermal paste.
 

acorn_

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It is not overheating, the paste should not be old as the laptop is 7 months old. I'd not say that GTA IV is more taxing than Furmark, and Furmark runs fine over extended periods of time. The max temp for CPU and GPU are 105°C and 120°C respectively, so 80°C-85°C is well within the boundaries. I've also updated the BIOS, and i did dust it out. A cooling pad wouldnt really help as the cooling slit is between the monitor and the base. Heating is not the issue most likey. You probably didnt read my whole thread as it stated that, but i wouldn't read something that has that much text either ;) I could replace the paste, i have built "a few" systems for myself and friends. But i dont think its needed.
 

toshibitsu

Distinguished
120°C for the GPU? A GPU should be around 80 - 85°C while gaming(the goal is to keep it under 90°C for extended periods). The maximum "safe" range for most Nvidia GPU's is about 105°C before the auto throttle kicks in, reducing performance to try and keep it from overheating.
 

acorn_

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Oct 28, 2017
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Actually, emergency shutdown is 120°C, but still, even if we say 105°C is max, im still 20°C under the limit. It is a relatively thin and lightweight laptop so the cooling isn't really great, but it still is not overheating. If you really want, ill take it outside where its a little cooler (~16°C) tommorow...
 

acorn_

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Oct 28, 2017
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I took it outside, made sure the GTX 1050 is enabled and used, still the same crash. Maximum temperature was 70°C on CPU and 65°C on GPU and then it crashed.

EDIT: I disabled the GTX 1050 but the Electron crash persists and behaves in the same way as with the GPU enabled. However this got fixed by an in-dev release of Electron so the only problem i still have is GTA IV crashing.
 

acorn_

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Oct 28, 2017
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I've increased the Windows TDR delay and will try again... I kinda think that 10 seconds will fry my GPU, lets see...

EDIT: Since i've increased the TDR, i haven't got any crashes, but i also didn't get any freezes. It might just be good luck, or it might have fixed it.

EDIT2: Even though the Electron crash persists with the GPU enabled or disabled, it is much more frequent with the GPU enabled. Discord Canary does not crash while Keybase crashes all the time.
 

acorn_

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Oct 28, 2017
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Idk, i still wanna wait as i didnt have a pleasant experience with Asus support before... From refusing to admit their Gsync "Mobo Replacement" stuff is a lie to refusing to do a battery service... I did play a LOT of GTA yesterday... 3 hours went by, no crashes. I restarted the game several times, no crashes. Then i wanted to do that mission. Guess what... it crashed in the first minute! So i open GTA IV again... playing for 4 hours, again restarting it a few times... Then i open up the mission again, it crashes in the second minute! My guess is that a minute or two after the cutscene, someone calls me in GTA and that causes a rendering issue... I dont know what could be up, thats just my guess because i have never finished the mission but sometimes, just before i kill the second biker (thats the mission), it crashes on me...
 
Oct 3, 2018
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Same here - this started happening to me about a month ago. Only difference is that it could happen to me when I'm just sitting at the Win 10 desktop typing something into a web page forum like this one.
Help!
I just finished reinstalling Windows 10 Pro from scratch too, figuring it was time to do it since it's been at least 4 years since I did a fresh install, but that didn't fix it.

I have a GTX 1080 FTW card from EVGA that has been in my system and working perfectly for many months until this started about a month ago. Before I reinstalled Win 10, I also did the usual clean/dust of the inside and cards and stuff.

Weird.