NVIDIA device driver/nvlddmkm.sys crashes - Rather odd case

Greetings all,

Since 2008 I have had problems with my nVidia GeForce 9600 GT (if thats whats causing the problem). The first occurence was after installing crysis, which freezed during the opening cinematics, and sometimes throughout the game.

The crashes look similiar to this:
YouTube - NVLDDMKM Error!! Call Of Duty World At War (in my case I was unable to fix it by cntrl+alt+delete/alt-tabbing out)
YouTube - GPU Error Situatuion - nvlddmkm.sys

The funny thing is, however, that the freezes would depend on the game being played and whether or not it was the first game played after startup. For example, I was able to live with the crashes by simply restarting the pc and then immediately running the game before doing anything else (meaning if I played the game, quit, and wanted to play it again, I'd have to restart). This process continued with all the other games I played (e.g. Call of Duty 4 and GTA: SA). The one game, however, where this crash almost never occured, was the multiplayer component of CoD4. Also, I was able to run GTA4 for quite a while before the error finally turned up.
Additionally, World of Warcraft freezed, but when I installed the latest expansion (Wrath of the Lich King), the crash NEVER occurred. As in, ever. I played it for months without any problems whatsoever.

All of the above occured with Windows XP installed.

However, at the start of this year, I installed Windows 7, and the crashes have continued, even with the multiplayer component of CoD4 and WotLK.

It usually gives me the "Display Driver Nvidia Windows Kernel Mode Driver Version <whatever version of the driver I happen to be using/testing> stopped responding and has successfully recovered." popup in the lower right of the screen. If I'm fast enough, I can use cntrl-alt-delete and kill the game process before my screen starts turning grainy (where the problem has spread to the desktop and not just the game).

I have tried everything, including:

* Installing the newest drivers, older drivers, using driver sweeper and safe mode
* Updating the BIOS
* Updating my chipset drivers
* Disabling Dreamscene
* Disabling UAC
* Using the expand.exe command in the cmd with the nvlddmkm.sys files
* Downloading a "working" version of nvlddmkm.sys and placing it in the appropriate directory


I noticed that after freezes, I got a BSOD saying: "Attempt to reset the display driver and recover from timeout failed."

After which, I tried this fix:
Solution 2: Setting the time delay before display driver recovery. | nvlddmkm stopped responding and has recovered.

Unfortunately, it didn't work either.

However, I doubt that it is a hardware-related issue, such as the GPU overheating, since I can run games such as WoW and CoD4 on the highest settings for literally hours on end (WoW binges ftw) with absolutely no problems.

Please, can anyone help?

If you got the drivers off MS go to NVIDIA and get them there. sometimes it does make a difference'
Joe

I've downloaded all of my drivers off of the nVidia site.

My system has done the same as the video. I do not know for sure what is doing it, but things I migh look for.

Game settings. Try lowering.
Memory problems.
Heat problems for the CPU or GPU.

Do you currently run online?

Are the games updated with latest patch?

One thing that 'may' have a difference is if your using the 'International' driver or not. If you live in the USA then use the version specified for there otherwise make sure your getting the international version.
I'd also agree with Saltgrass concerning memory problems. If you have two or more sticks of RAM try running with just one inserted. If you find that the error appears on one stick and not the other then you know which is the bad stick.

In addition to all discussed above, I would try to uninstall Nvidia driver, reboot, go to windows/system32/drivers and rename nvlddmkm.sys to nvlddmkm.sys.old. Install latest Nvidia driver then.