BSOD - nvlddmkm.sys/ Win7/ Nvidia GTS 250 problem

[Daarck]

Hey folks, wonder if anyone can shed some light on this.

I'm having a problem with my machine blue-screening, freezing and sometimes losing the picture on the monitor while the machine is still obviously running. To give you some background, I bought the machine over a year ago and was very happy with it - it was built for me by the PC Specialist folks, and while it did randomly BSOD a few times when I first got it, I put it down to the 'burning in' period for the new components.

Fast forward to now, and I've been playing World of Warcraft on it successfully for the past year, as well as other games like the L4Ds and more recently Dead Island. However I bought Dungeons and Dragons: Daggerdale and Batman: Arkham Asylum last week and they kill my machine within minutes of starting the game. The BSOD error report is always the same (when I get one), and that it's the nvlddmkm.sys file that's causing the problem.

I've been playing around in various forums and tried some suggestions, like using brand new (and old) drivers for the GTS250, for my onboard Realtek sound and have manually deleted everything in the Nvidia folders on the machine to install drivers from scratch with no older nvlddmkm files available for the machine to use instead of the new one - nothing works.

If anyone has any clue as to what to do next, which doesn't include buying a new graphics card - because that doesn't work, apparently - please feel free to weigh in.

Thanks.

 

[Daarck]

Hey folks - more fannying around, more info (hopefully)

Ran a program (BlueScreenViewer) that highlighted 3 files that are causing the problem; I intentionally made the pc fail a number of times and the error report was always the same - BCC code 116, and the Blue Screen message blames the nvlddmkm.sys file, but the BSViewer also shows problems with dxgkrnl.sys and dxgmms1.sys.

Anyone have an idea?:

 

[vanthus]

I would say it's all pointing to a faulty GPU,
is there any way you can get hold of one to try it,before buying a new one.

 

[Daarck]

Hi Vanthus, ta for taking the time to respond.

If it wasn't for the fact that the failure is very specific, always the same, and only on two pieces of software, I would be tempted to agree with you - I can make this happen by loading either game mentioned before and giving it a few mins, and I know it'll blue screen on me. Someone on another forum suggested that dropping the memory speed of the card by 20MHz had worked in their case, and it did extend my playing time on D&D, but only by 40 mins - after that, same story.

This wouldn't be a problem but for Skyrim coming out - everything else I ask of my pc is fine, but this gaming issue is definitely a pain.

 

[tom_gr7]

I'm guessing your out of warranty?

You could call pcs and ask for advice about it, even if warranty has ran out, as a customer I'm sure they will help you out. It does sound like the gpu is faulty though.

 

[vanthus]

I didn't realise the problem only occurred on two specific apps,I thought you meant it happened randomly,
In this case it would obviously point to the the said programs being the problem,
I would try tweaking the settings or reinstalling the offending applications.

 

[Daarck]

Hey folks, thanks for the input. I've reinstalled several times (drivers, games and assorted programs and utilities), tried under clocking my graphics card (worked for a while, then back to normal) and basically tried pretty much everything that's been suggested to me over a number of different forums. Nothing works, for any length of time. Sad to say, I've ended up over the weekend installing (from Steam) Daggerdale and Batman on to the pc that Win7 machine actually replaced, and they both work fine and for extended periods of time. It's a WinXp machine with an ATI 3850HD graphics card. The future of pc gaming is to go back the way apparently.

Giving up on this - it needs a developers touch from what I can see - either Nvidia or Microsoft (or both preferably), but from what I can see neither seem eager to touch it. As I said, this is not an isolated instance of this problem - a quick search on the web reveals a large number of folks suffering from it, and no-one has a fix.

 

[NilSatis]

I think this problem is that the new drivers and the uninstalling of drivers are not getting rid of the old pieces of Nvidia driver from your pc. I could be wrong but it is worth a shot. Older games will work but newer ones that require use of a later driver will crash as the system gets confused when finding parts of old drivers on your system. Either this or the newer games require a piece of tech. that this card has but does not get supported fully on the later drivers which these games require.

Make sure you have the latest drivers for the card you have downloaded and ready to install. Get an application such as driver cleaner; and make sure that every last piece of Nvidia driver software, or files are removed. Be careful when you do this but be thorough and ruthless!

After this is done, manually go into your pc and look for things that may still remain. Make sure to search the whole pc and include any hidden files and folders aswell; this is important.

Directories such as windows/system32/drivers should be checked and you should look for old items in these too. Manually delete all of the Nvidia related old files (although this should have been done already by Driver Cleaner there are certain bits and pieces that can remain) and then try and install the latest drivers again. I doubt there is anything wrong with your card, just some nasty old registry entries or corrupt driver architecture that remains. To be sure of this, you can always try a reinstall of the os on your latest machine. It is drastic, but it may solve your problem.

This might help and lead to some other links; link is for Vista user but should still apply to you

Good luck. In any case, push the issue with Nvidia; as frustrating as it is, someone there will eventually be able to help in some way.
If there are any problems or corruption with your installation of directx then this can also cause problems, a reinstall of the os will make sure nothing remains, but you can always (and I would) run the latest dx setups and make sure you have all of this up to date. Get the latest dx9, and 10.