nvlddmkm.sys, bluescreen of death, driver stopped working

Tuasemper

Honorable
Apr 4, 2013
7
0
10,510
Hi. I have an Asus G50VT laptop, Vista 64 bit, Nvidia GeForce 9800M GS. About a year ago Win Update quit working. I didn't worry about it then. Yes, I was an idiot. Things starting slowing down, so I did a recovery 2 weeks ago. Since then, I've been getting the blue screen of death, & the pc restarts itself. After logging in, it says display driver nvlddmkm.sys has stopped working, but has recovered. World of Warcraft always worked with my version of Nvidia graphics card before the recovery, but now it says it can't find a suitable card. To try & fix this, I installed what I believe was the latest version of the graphics driver, on top of the old one, from GeForce/Nvidia. I think it was version 307.83. I didn't get the nvlddmkm.sys message again for 2 days, but World of Warcraft still wouldn't work. Then the blue screen & display driver message came back with a vengeance. I did a roll back, since the game used to work with the previous graphics card. No fix. I tried to uninstall/reinstall using the disc Asus gave me. No fix. I'm still getting the blue screen, & the display driver message. So I'm using the original Nvidia driver version that came with the laptop. Sometimes when I check the driver, it says the device is working properly. Other times it says it has stopped working, & gives it a code 43. All of my Win Updates are up to date now, & when I try to manually update the Nvidia driver, it says it's up to date.

Is there a way to update the Windows driver itself for displaying the graphics card? The nvlddmkm.sys?

nvlddmkm.sys version 186.31, file version is 8.15.11.8631

How can I get rid of this message so the blue screen will stop? In case it helps, clicking the "hide problem details" on the message saying Windows recovered from an unexpected shut down shows a BCCode of 116, & 50.

I'm not a professional with computers, so if possible, please use layman's terms. :)
 

Lisan al-Gaib

Honorable
Apr 1, 2013
59
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10,660
Backup your data and try a clean install of the OS to see if that resolves the issue. Fresh install usually resolve software conflicts. If you're still getting BSOD afterwards, it may be a hardware problem with the graphics card. If you are adventurous, take out the video card and try baking it in the oven. That worked for my old laptop with a Geforce 7900GS.
 

Tuasemper

Honorable
Apr 4, 2013
7
0
10,510
asus g50vt 64 bit vista home
6.0.6002 service pack 2 build 6002
intel core2 duo cpu p7450 @ 2.13ghz 2133mhz
installed RAM 4g, total phys mem 4g, avail phys mem 2.78g, total virtual mem 8.17g, avail virtual mem 6.92g
nvidia geforce 9800m gs driver vers 8.15.11.8631
mobile intel 45 express chipset

checked I/O under sys info, all status is ok
checked IRQ's all status is ok
checked memory all status is ok

under problem devices in sys info geforce 9800m gs is listed, but says its working properly

under sys drivers nvlddmkm.sys says its not started, start mode is manual....is that normal?

I thought overclocking was a bad thing, but from what I'm reading, I may actually need to overclock the gpu in order to get it to run at a faster/higher frame rate, & that may fix it. Is that right? If overheating then becomes a problem, what's the best way to keep it cool? I have one of those fan stands under it at the moment. Whatever I change it to, can it be reversed if it doesn't work? What are the odds that overclocking it will get rid of the BSOD, & allow World of Warcraft to run again? Right before the display driver message appears, & the laptop restarts itself, the cursor freezes for a few seconds. It'd be nice if this were to fix it.

Not much air seems to be coming out of the side vent of the laptop either. I don't know if that's important or not.

EDIT: I installed & ran GPU-Z. Here is the info it gave.......

GPU: G94M
Revision: A1
Release Date : 2008
Transistors: 505M
ROP's/TMU's: 16/32
Bus Interface: PCI-E 1.1 x 16 @ x 16 1.1
Shaders: 64 Unified
DirectX Support: 10.0 / SM4.0
Memory Type: GDDR3
Bus Width: 256 bit
Memory Size: 512 mb
GPU Clock : 0 mhz
Memory: 0 mhz
Default Clock: 530 mhz
Memory: 799 mhz
Shader: 1325 mhz