NVidia Video Card Crash?

[Anubis]

I think it's OpenGL.  The only 2 games I've had this happen for is the Penny Arcade games (both 1 and 2) and Aquaria.  All my DirectX stuff runs fine.

I can play Aquaria from 5min to 1 hour... the crash is very random for me.  Sometimes I'm clicking, sometimes I'm just swimming.  A few times it has stuttered (low frames) and died, other times it has just quit unexpectedly.  Like it was said above, the display driver crashes and restarts, but aquaria stays dead on my screen till I shut down the process.

[Alpha_Climatise]

I have a rather large array of games my fiancé gave me one day, a compilation of about 50 or so casual games, I've never had any of those crash in this manner, but then I've never delved too deeply into which of them run GL if they are accelerated.

If Anubis can replicate the error in other GL based games then that is rather pointing to the API failing on mobile hardware.

I don't have either of the penny arcade adventures. Any other GL based games or demo's you'd recommend testing with?

UPDATE: I ended up downloading GL Excess as it provided a means to loop GL playback and wait for an error. Good news and bad news on that front. Good news is that I can exactly replicate the fault we have been getting, so it's nothing to do with your game code. Bad news is that it is a nightmare bug, roughly linked to Vista/nVidia combos. There is a 113 page deep thread over at nVidia bout it (http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=25381), so that doesn't bode too well for getting it fixed anytime soon. From my readings I have picked out a few tweaks I'll try on my system but as of yet there doesn't seem to be any one sure fire way to get rid of the problem, nVidias stance is "we're working on it"

[Alec]

UPDATE: I ended up downloading GL Excess as it provided a means to loop GL playback and wait for an error. Good news and bad news on that front. Good news is that I can exactly replicate the fault we have been getting, so it's nothing to do with your game code. Bad news is that it is a nightmare bug, roughly linked to Vista/nVidia combos. There is a 113 page deep thread over at nVidia bout it (http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=25381), so that doesn't bode too well for getting it fixed anytime soon. From my readings I have picked out a few tweaks I'll try on my system but as of yet there doesn't seem to be any one sure fire way to get rid of the problem, nVidias stance is "we're working on it"

Interesting. I'm glad to hear its not something I screwed up, but it really sucks that there doesn't seem to be an immediate fix on the horizon. I guess the best bet is to create enough noise so that NVidia starts to care a bit more.

[Alpha_Climatise]

I started with the least invasive suggestion on a large list of suggested fixes and bizarrely it actually worked. I say bizarrely because the fix was just uninstalling Microsoft Dream Scenes (I don’t even use it, it was just installed via updates). Once I removed this I had GL Excess run overnight, almost 8 hours straight without error.

Since there are bound to be people with this error that aren’t running Dream Scenes it’s not the ultimate solution, but worth trying for a reasonably simple first step. There are a great many other suggested fixes listed on link I provided, but reading through all those posts is time consuming.

These are the steps for removing Dream Scenes if it is present on your system.

• Click ‘Start’
• Open ‘Control Panel’
• Open ‘Programs and Features’
• Click ‘View Installed Updates’ in the left pane
• Click the ‘Name’ column heading to sort the list
• Find any instances of Dream Scenes Installations (may be listed as preview for non-ultimate owners)
• Right-Click any instances found and select ‘Uninstall’
• Reboot your machine once all instances have been removed

[Alec]

That is indeed bizarre. Thanks a lot for investigating and sharing that information.

[Anubis]

I'm running Vista Home Premium (HA! Premium... where's unleaded?) and there's no DreamScene stuff on it... just to let you know.   

[boom]

I think I found a solution to this problem. My guess is the cause is mismatched drivers/OpenGL implementation version, because I have not experienced the driver crash since I did this.

-Go to http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us and download the latest version of drivers for your OS/GPU.
-Go to Device Manager
-Click on the + next to Display Adapters
-Right click on your NVIDIA graphics card and go to properties
-Driver tab
-Click Uninstall
-Check "Delete the driver software for this device"
-Windows will want to restart. When it does, it will install default display driver and want to restart again. Do so.
-Install the drivers obtained in the first step, and restart one final time.

Again, I have had no problems playing since I did this. Post if this solves your problem!

[MwMFantasArtist]

I'm not sure i'd go right ahead and update to anything that might be considered the latest video driver, or if it might possibly still be in beta. Because that happens.
Especially to be careful not to install the wrong driver or version.
Fact is, you might have certain other games installed that prefer another type of driver. So then that one may have its own issues.

Personaly, I run a lot of 3D games, so I don't know how much of a good idea that would be for me.

[MwMFantasArtist]

http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_notebook_winvista_179.28_beta.html

For instance, this is the latest driver type for my laptops Nvidia 9700M GTS. But it's still in Beta form, which may mean certain problems within itself.

[boom]

That's the NVIDIA recommended driver for your system -- If you are looking for a non-beta, you'll need to go to your laptop manufacturer's web site and get a driver from there or you'll need to check out http://www.laptopvideo2go.com . I've been using laptopvideo2go for years and their drivers are always more updated than the laptop manufacturer's, although NVIDIA did recently start supplying reference drivers for mobile cards.

Personally, I would go with the one on NVIDIA's web site. If you encounter problems, you can always uninstall it and try another driver by the same method I posted.

[Sheepdude]

I am having the same problem.

I do not have DreamScene installed, so uninstalling is not a viable option.

I tried Boom's suggestion, but nothing changed. I also tried underclocking my GPU and memory, to no avail.

This error does not occur with a stand-alone version of Aquaria that I downloaded from a torrent site (game version 1.0.3). The error only occurs with the Steam version of the game.

Although it doesn't seem like a problem that can be readily fixed, here are my computer specifications:

450W power unit
Intel e6420 Core 2 Duo 2.13 gHz processor
BFGTech NVidia GeForce 8800 GTS OC 320MB
4GB Patriot DDR2 800 RAM

I've read that the nvlddmkm.sys error is due to Windows not working properly with NVidia drivers. I hope Microsoft is working on a fix, because this error almost renders Aquaria unplayable on my system.

[Sheepdude]

Whatever. I got pissed and bought a 9800 GT from BestBuy (they're on sale now!) Problem solved.

Edit: Nevermind. After 6 hours of consecutive play, I got the error.

[Fenizrael]

Hey, I bought Aquaria on Steam recently and I've been having the exact same problem as others in this thread. I updated to the newest drivers for my card and the problem has persisted, if not gotten worse.

If anybody comes up with a way to fix it, I'd like to know.

Edit: I've been playing around with the game in windowed mode at a lower resolution and so far so good...

[discojoe]

This happens to me too. I'm only about four hours into the game and I've had six random crashes that happen just like those mentioned before (white screen, "nvdldlkdkmd blah blah" error). There seems to be no common factor in the crashes -- they can literally happen at any time, whether in the menus, looking at the map, exploring, etc. This doesn't ever occur with any of the FPS games I play, like TF2, CS:S, L4D.

My specs:

E6600 2.40 Ghz
GeForce 8800 GT (180.48 drivers)
3GB PC2-5300
Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit

STEAM version of Aquaria, btw.

[Alec]

Try updating your video card drivers in the way described in this thread.