Vista Nvidia 8600GT Crashes

[Lyletuba]

My brother’s desktop computer was running fine on Thursday, October 9, 2008. Played DDO for a few hours. No problem.

A few days later on Saturday, October 11, 2008 he crashes. A lot.
He crashes when he enters his Vista user password.

He thinks there was a Windows automatic update that contained a driver for his video card. I know, I know – I told him never to let Windows update video card drives. Trust me, he knows it now.

Anyway, we went into safe mode and removed the video drivers.
We couldn’t find the original drivers we used, so we downloaded the latest drivers from the Nvidia website. NG.

Every driver we tried had issues:
He runs DDO and notices artifacts and flickering on the screen.
Blank screen alternating with the Display Driver Stopped Responding and Has Recovered - nvlddmkm Nvidia Driver error.
Then a complete crash.
Upon reboot, it crashes when he enters his Vista user password.

The only other thing he did in the meantime is mess around with his printer drivers and settings. Don’t think it is relevant, but mentioning it just in case.

Does anyone know which Nvidia drivers work for this video card and Vista?

His Specs:
OS: Vista Home Premium 32 bit
CPU: AMD Athlon 64XP Dual Core Processor
RAM; 3GB
Rig: HP Pavillion PC A6237C-B
PSU: Bestech Model #ATX-250-12Z
Video Card: XFX GeForce 8600GT XXX Zalman Fan PCI Express (Model: PVT84JUSD4)

[Freeman]

Normally the latest drivers from Nvidia should be fine. However, if you are having problems, you could try uninstalling your current drivers, rebooting, then installing an older version of the driver. You can find previous versions of the driver on NVidia's website. I'd try doing that before you move on to other troubleshooting techniques. Also, make sure you check the event log to see if it reported anything about the errors that caused the crashes.(Or anything else, really)

[Altumus]

The video card could be overheating or having hardware issues as well

[Lyletuba]

Thanks for the responses.

Drivers we’ve tried:
GeForce Release 178 WHQL 178.13 September 25, 2008
GeForce Release 175 WHQL 175.19 June 23, 2008
ForceWare Release 169 WHQL 169.25 December 20, 2007

Our procedure for driver re-install is always uninstall in safe-mode, run Guru3D - Driver Sweeper (http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1655), reboot to let Windows install the Standard VGA drivers, then we install the new drivers.

Initially had trouble getting Vista to stop automatically installing the drivers it wanted. So we turned off (User Account Controls) and set Windows Update to “Ask” first.

Thought the issues could be heat or power related but the card ran fine previously. Those problems would have been present since day 1 and they weren’t.

[Kraldor]

As Altumus said before, you should watch the temps on your video card. Get a program like CPUID Hardware Monitor or GPU-Z to monitor the card's temperature, and if necessary, RivaTuner to directly control the fan on it for better cooling. Your brother's problems could be easily be caused by a driver issue with fan control.

I know for a fact that my 9800 GTX gets about 30 degrees warmer if I don't manually set fan speeds in RivaTuner.

[Kambuk]

Printer drivers could be doing it.
Reccomend uninstalling all printer drivers and removing all printers from the system.
Bad Printer drivers can cause blue screens.

Kambuk

[Freeman]

The card could have overheated once, cooked some components, and started having the issues you are seeing now. I've had video cards that worked fine for years start freezing up or giving me other weird problems every time I tried to play a game. If you have another video card handy(Even onboard video), you could try swapping them out to see if the problem still occurs. That would at least determine if it was a hardware or software problem.

[Lyletuba]

Kraldor – I was under the impression that temp monitors are all hardware based. Most people just say “could be over-heating” and don’t say how to do it. Thank you for pointing out those programs. I will try them out tonight and report back on temps.

Kambuk - The errors are directly related to the video driver. But you never know how conflicts may rear their ugly heads. I might have him uninstall the print for now.

Freeman - He has onboard video that can run DDO, barely. The card was my birthday gift so he could run DDO better :o. If I remove the card and revert back to the on-board video, what would it help prove? The drivers are different.

[Freeman]

Freeman - He has onboard video that can run DDO, barely. The card was my birthday gift so he could run DDO better :o. If I remove the card and revert back to the on-board video, what would it help prove? The drivers are different.

Sorry, I wasn't very specific. If the problem still occurred with the onboard video, then it would have to be a problem either with another driver or in the OS. Since you've tried several versions of the NVidia driver, I don't think the NVidia driver is the likely source of the problem. That leaves either another software problem or a hardware problem. Of course, you could also try running his card in your machine to see if your system crashes as well while you have it out.

[Lyletuba]

Agreed. It could prove that the problem lies with the Nvidia driver but he's not very tech savvy so I don't want to have him remove the card just yet.
Unfortunetly, we don't live near each other so can't test his card in my comp (besides, I'm still using AGP :o). All the more reason why it was so annoying to discover the RealVNC doesn't work on Vista.:mad:


Sorry, I wasn't very specific. If the problem still occurred with the onboard video, then it would have to be a problem either with another driver or in the OS. Since you've tried several versions of the NVidia driver, I don't think the NVidia driver is the likely source of the problem. That leaves either another software problem or a hardware problem. Of course, you could also try running his card in your machine to see if your system crashes as well while you have it out.

[Freeman]

Unfortunetly, we don't live near each other so can't test his card in my comp (besides, I'm still using AGP :o). All the more reason why it was so annoying to discover the RealVNC doesn't work on Vista.:mad:

Yeah, I had a ton of problems trying to use VNC on Vista. Then I read about how to enable Remote Desktop Connection on Vista Home with a relatively simple mod. I did that on my media PC downstairs. From what I recall, you just need to download the files and run a batch script, then reboot.

[Stormanne]

You could do a system rollback, go to the last stable system settings and go from there manually installing drivers. It may well be an errant driver located elsewhere in the system update. Also, try having him start the system in "Safe mode with Networking" to see if he can access DDO that way under bare minimum and work your way up from there...

[Lyletuba]

We uninstalled and unplugged his printer. Had to find it in the hidden stuff in Device Manager.

Vista still insists on installing a driver for the 8600GT despite the fact that we have Automatic Updates set to ASK. My guess is that it has already downloaded the Nvidia driver from Windows Update previously and no longer needs to ask permission to install it. This time it installed 7.15.11.7813. Go VISTA!

Had a few instances of his Antivirus (AVG) attacking his firewall files (Zonelabs) at start-up. We ignored these and restarted. Hope his hard drive isn’t corrupt.

Then we tried going back to a prior Restore Point but it failed. Although it did seem to roll back some desktop icons.

I had him change the BIOS back to his onboard video and unplug the cable to the 8600GT (although we left it installed).

Still had issues but on a later crash recovery he accepted the System Restore offered by Windows. This seemed to work better. The system became more stable.

On restart it popped-up a window that listed 4 issues:

Nvidia graphics drive – Makes sense.
Download and install Nvidia networking controller – This has had an exclamation point in Device Manager despite his internet working fine.
Contact Lexmark international – For some reason Vista still remembers his printer. We double checked Device Manager and it isn’t listed.
Norton internet security – He got rid of this long ago and can’t find it in Add/Remove Programs.


We shelved those issues for now.

Oh, and we checked the temp of the 8600GT and it was 52 degrees C with a 30% fan speed. Of course, this is when we were running on his onboard video. Too bad those programs can’t run in safe mode.

We re-did some system changes reversed by the roll-back: Turning UAC off again and telling Vista to Ask for Automatic Updates.

Then he checked the Update history and found an Nvidia display driver update from 10-06-08 @9:40pm. I thought the problems started after that time but I could be wrong. So I had him use Add/Remove Programs and uninstall the Update from that day.

The computer crashed half-way through so I told him to shut down and we’ll take it from there later tonight.

Costco suggested wiping it and restoring the Default Factory Settings but I’m hoping we don’t have to go that far.

Any thoughts?

[Freeman]

I know XP has an option for a repair install, where it doesn't wipe everything, but it takes the OS back to the state it was in when you first installed it from the disc. I know Vista has the same option, but he may only have a Recovery disc instead of the actual Vista discs. I'm sure you can google it to find out if there's another way to do it. That should in theory clean out all the updates Vista has performed.

Before you go down that path though, I would try uninstalling the NVidia update you found again. If it doesn't work normally, you could also try doing it in Safe mode.(Vista still has that right?) There are some other ways to uninstall drivers(Driver Cleaner), but I've never used them and can't tell you how safe/easy they are.

If the issues continue, a wipe/restore may be the most time-saving course of action you can take. You obviously know what you are doing, and you've tried just about everything I would be able to try without having physical access to the computer.

[Lyletuba]

When we re-start, if the Windows Update is still there, I will keep trying to kill it.
Vista does have Safe-Mode. After uninstalling the Nvidia drivers, we use Drive Sweeper in Safe-Mode to make sure the driver is dead (although Vista still finds it).

If it's dead and gone, I'll have him play around for a while and then we'll try re-installing a driver for the 8600GT and get it running.

If it fails at that point, I think we only have the nuclear option.

I'll look into the Reset/Restore option for Vista.

Thanks.

[Lyletuba]

OK, the system is stable using the onboard video. Here’s how we got there:

First, we tried to address the misc. stuff:

Lexmark Printer Files - We found some printer files and used the uninstall file therein to (hopefully) kill the Lexmark stuff for good.
Device Manager Issues - Noticed an exclamation mark in his Device Manager for 6to4 Adapter (“Device cannot start code 10”). Learned this is a common Vista bug and disabled it. Had another exclamation mark next to "Security Processor Loader Driver". Unable to figure out this one, so we left it alone. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.
Norton – Not sure how to root this out, if it’s still in there.
ZoneAlarm vs. AVG – Learned that AVG’s latest update had issues with ZoneAlarm, so at least one other mystery is solved.


Then we moved on to the 8600GT:
We uninstalled the driver for 8600GT in safe mode, used Drive Sweeper and then uninstalled the hardware from Device Manager.
Reboot and Vista gave an error because it couldn’t find the C:/WINDOWS/SYSTEM32/nVmVctray.dll and NvCpl.dll files.
Then it installed the Nvidia driver for the 8600GT again! Why it didn’t install the Standard VGA Driver, I don’t have a clue. But this driver was ver. 7.15.11.6222 from July 2007. At least it’s different from the prior auto-installed drivers.

Reboot normally and get a black screen.
Restart
Windows Error Recovery Screen - start windows normally
Black screen, again.
Restart
This time, in the Windows Error Recovery Screen we selected the option to let Vista try to fix the error. It offered us a System Restore and we said no. After about 10 min, it restarted.

Onboard Video:
We noticed that the onboard video (nForce 430/GeForce 6150SE) had the same driver as the 8600GT. Hmmm. I know they’re both Nvidia devices but I was skeptical that the same driver would work for both.
So we downloaded the latest driver for the onboard video (ver. 15.24) and installed it.
The computer rebooted to complete the install and worked!


The order of things may be different but it was 1:00 am and I was tired. But the point is we’re stable and running in normal mode with the onboard video.

Any suggestions on what to do next?

[Lyletuba]

I had him backup everything.
Then changed the BIOS to use the 8600GT and restarted.
It crashed right away.

We were having trouble changing drivers because before installing new drivers we wanted to have the Standard VGA drivers (the ‘blank slate’). But Vista kept pulling drivers out of its @$$ for the 8600GT (ver 7.15.11.7540 and 7.15.11.6222 to be specific).

Eventually, we were able to use the following to successfully uninstall the drivers and revert back to Standard VGA drivers:
1. Safe Mode WITHOUT Networking;
2. Uninstall driver from Device Manager;
3. Driver Sweeper; and then
4. EMCO Moveonboot (works with Vista) for the files Driver Sweeper couldn’t delete.

Once we were able to start fresh, we started going down the list of 860GT drivers form Nvidia:
GeForce Release 178 WHQL 178.24 October 15, 2008
GeForce Release 178 WHQL 178.13 September 25, 2008
GeForce Release 177 BETA 177.92 August 26, 2008

All worked for a few minutes but then screen went black and we got the old ‘driver stopped working and restarted’ with a nvlddmkm has stopped responding and followed up with his screen getting artifacts and noise, etc.

Note that the temp was consistently 53-55 C for each driver so I doubt it’s a heat issue.

We then installed RivaTuner to lower his core clock and shader slightly because I had heard this worked for someone on the forums.

Installed ForceWare Release 163 WHQL 163.75 November 6, 2007

Now this driver worked for a while.
Not sure if it is related but he also noticed that he no longer had an error in Security Processor Loader Driver in Device Manager. Coincidence? I don’t know.

But when he tried playing DDO, the graphics weren’t that good and some objects were flickering. Then he crashed completely (just froze).
The Temp did spike to 61 C while playing but that is excepted for DDO.


My theory is that the Windows Update Driver got stuck in there and kept corrupting our later driver installs. I believe the problem is now fixed because we are able to get to the Standard VGA driver state before installing new drivers.

But now we seem to have this nvlddmkm problem that he didn’t have before the Update. I can’t believe that the prior driver that we had installed before the Update was the only driver that works for this card and Vista Home Premium 32 bit. But it seems like this nvlddmkm error is an issue between Vista and Nvidia that has no solution (other than buying a new video card or downgrading to XP).

So what do I do?

[Stormanne]

GeForce Release 178 WHQL 178.24 October 15, 2008

On this one, did you happen to see if it was a beta release? Usually a lot buggier than a full release

[Lyletuba]

We uninstalled to Standard VGA and then deleted all files named “nvlddmkm” (they were the .sy_ installer files, but wanted to be 100% sure).
Found some AGIEA- PhysX drivers and removed them (uninstall and Driver Sweeper).
Plugged the computer directly into the wall – not thru a surge protector.
Then installed GeForce Release 175 WHQL 175.19 June 23, 2008

Restarted and he crashed while typing in the password for his user account. Just froze.
Restarted in normal mode and crashed a few seconds after logging in.
Restarted in Safe Mode.

Noticed Security Processor Loader Driver had an error again, code 24 ("This device is not present, is not working properly, or does not have all its drivers installed”).
He also didn’t have a spot in Device Manager for his monitor (HP w2207) so we downloaded the driver from HP’s website and installed it.

Restarted in normal mode.

Screen flicker and artifacts, then crash.
Restarted in Safe Mode, removed drivers, then installed -
GeForce Release 175 WHQL 175.1 May 13, 2008
Also re-installed the Monitor Driver.
Then restarted in Normal Mode.
Ran for a few minutes then the screen flickered and crashed (black screen).

I’m thinking either his PSU is too weak (odd because it ran fine before these issues started) or something is screwed up in Vista.

[Kraldor]

What power supply does he have? The 8600GT isn't a very powerful card, so I doubt that could be the issue.

If you can, I would just try to start with a fresh install of Vista. Just backup everything important and start fresh. Don't install anything like Norton that can create driver conflicts and see if your situation improves.

[bigmouth]

IMHO, back up all of your data and re-install the whole Vista and all drivers and DDO.
And then if you suffer from the same situation, call HP for support if you are under warranty service.
Coz that looks like a hardware problem.

[Lyletuba]

We tried going back to a month-old restore point but then immediately got the nvlddmkm error. :mad:

So we went NUCLEAR - restored the computer back to the factory default settings using the HP Recovery Partition on his hard drive. :eek:

As soon as he installed the 8600GT driver (GeForce Release 178 WHQL 178.13 September 25, 2008) he had issue then crashed. He couldn’t even get Vista to run normal mode without crashing on the login screen. :(

So he removed the 8600GT driver and switched the BIOS back to use the onboard video instead of the 8600GT. :cool:

No more crashing and he was able to update Vista (SP 1, etc.), install virus prot (AVG), firewall (Zonealarm), DDO, etc. :)

We’re going to call the card maker today and see if they have any suggestions. :o

[Missing_Minds]

What is the model of your HP? I'm curious about the power supply honestly.

Also, something to note about lexmark. In the past, even if you removed the drivers, it still left hooks in the printer stack rendering it completely useless. There are two ways to fix it (back in xp). One, re install windows. Two rebuild your printer que. Given that you blasted it any way with your restore you probably won't have issues, but I figured I'd speak up about that one.

[Manatee]

You might get Rivatuner on there and take a look at what the core/shader/memory frequencies are set to. I'm using a Gateway FX4710 now with a 9800GT - first non-self-built computer in ages, but the price was too good to pass up. Everything runs great on it *EXCEPT FOR GAMES USING THE TURBINE 3D ENGINE...*... So LOTRO was crashing, then DDO...

What would happen was as soon as it got into 3D mode, eventually I'd get artifacts, a blue/black flicker, and BSOD with the same driver and an error message...

I found out that the card came pre-overclocked, and despite it working ROCK SOLID in every other program (and I use a lot of 3D single player and MMOs around here), it would crash within 30 seconds (up to 1minute depending on how cool the box was)... I went to nvidia's site and looked for the official specs on the card, set the frequencies BACK (underclocked relatively) and both programs became immediately stable.

Worth a look, and it's a far easier thing to test than the whole drive sweep thing.. btw, that's with the latest beta drivers, so I think it was completely driver independent for me. I found that somebody playing F.E.A.R. on the same Gateway box had similar issues so I thought as a last ditch effort I'd try it, and thankfully that was the ditch that fixed it.

Best luck to you..
manatee

[Lyletuba]

We sent the card back to XFX (the manufacturer) to test it for defects.

Missing Minds - His computer is the HP a6237c Desktop PC part number GN562AA with the Bestec PSU Model #ATX-250-12Z (250W). We've been told the PSU is fine for this card by XFX tech support. I am still skeptical but sending back the card was free so that was our first step. ;) But if the card comes back as OK then we will replace the PSU.

Manatee - Tried underclocking the card with RivaTuner. No luck. But thanks for the suggestion.

[Streaker]

i had xfx 6800xt for yrs great card, but xfx doesn't list all the detail spec's needed to run their video cards, for example on Tiger Direct (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?Sku=P450-8672&AffiliateID=pnkDUx_cu3o-sFN0IPEqe_xIIwj1bTt7pA) it states min. 300w, im currently using evga they are listing 350w as min. so when get card back (if ok) consider upgrading you can find good powersupplies cheap, im using a Antec Basiq 350w only 20bucks from Newegg (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371013)& will power the card your using well

so you know my pc specs atm is similar X2 5000+, but running 9500gt, 2gb ram, 2 dvd/rw roms, on xp

[Lyletuba]

The card was defective:

Your recent returns ref: XCR18235 has recently completed the testing process with the following status: {IYH216503 = FAULTY}.

Got the card back (can't tell if it's the same one or a refurb) and it works perfectly with the latest drivers frpm the XFX site.
:D

[Fickleknee]

I have the same nvidia card with Vista and it's having the same problem, chain-crashing with the error message regarding the nvlddmkm driver. DDO is the only program this happens with.