TF2 crash ... a higher power doesn't like me.

[WalkinTarget]

Was playing tonight and had just begun a game of Granary when I completely lagged right out of the game. Screen stopped moving, audio was stuck in a loop and when I next moved about 40 seconds later the ingame timer had ticked off over 4 minutes of actual time !! I dropped out to the desktop and found this lovely error message:

Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding.

I considered it a fluke and saw that a spot on the Lair was finally open, so I then jumped on there. Within 40 seconds of gameplay the same damn thing happened, so I had to dump out of the game and restart the PC. I found there were no Steam updates so I picked up an Nvidia driver update, using a beta this time (163.75) but back on the Lair, the game crapped out about a minute or two in ...

This .. just blows my mind that I could have no issues whatsoever, and now I'm reduced to sitting on the sidelines watching this game pass me by. I am sooo mad right now I could break something ... maybe my worthless headset since it doesn't work anyhow ... :cry:

[WalkinTarget]

Tried the following, no luck at all so far:

1) Registry hack - HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\GraphicsDrivers\DCI
TdrDdiDelay Reg_Dword 0x00000014(20)
TdrDelay Reg_Dword 0x00000014(20)

2) System Restore - went back 2 days before a lot of Windows Updates were applied.

3) Nvidia driver rollback - 163.69

4) I also had changed the resolution, but I've reset that back and still a crash anywhere from 20 seconds to 1:30 into the game.

[Thrashdragon]

I am getting pretty frequent crashes as well with a black screen and looping audio. I can usually get 3 or 4 rounds in before it happens, unless I attempt to change servers, in which case it happens immediately. I had no problems whatsoever with the beta, either.

:pissed:

[Tails_Kitsune]

I wish I could be of more help, but I've know idea what to suggest.

My drivers are quite old...I honestly can't remember the last time I updated them.

For you headset, WalkinTarget...does it work with other applications? I've heard that USB headsets don't work with TF2; they need to plug directly in to your sound card to be capable with TF2.

If it continues, it wouldn't hurt to send Steam a support ticket. They may take 2-3 days to reply, and someone may fix your problem here beforehand, but they may have a few suggestions. Hope the nasty screens of death disappear soon.

[(DSP)-Bar]

I had problems as well and I tried re-installing etc. Nothing fixed until I updated my videos drivers. Might be worth a shot. It worked for me.

[WalkinTarget]

FIXED !!!

Removed ANY and ALL Nvidia drivers (I had four of them in the NVidia folder), restarted Windows and then loaded the 163.69 version. After yet another reboot, its ben fine for 1.5 hours of gaming.

I know standard operating procedure is to uninstall/reinstall, I have NEVER done that before ... I always dump it right on top ... thank God I got it working .. I panic when stuff breaks on me after being bulletproof for months ... oh well, back to your regularly scheduled programming ..

[WalkinTarget]

Tails, the headset works in speech recognition just fine .. I've run thru the training of that, but I'm primarily using my front jacks for that and I also tried the rear jacks right into the onboard sound, but no go. Next step is to buy another set of headphones (dunno why, but I can't test much of anything else).

[Tails_Kitsune]

W00T! Glad to hear you've got it working, WalkinTarget! :2thumbs:

[WalkinTarget]

Here's what trips my trigger .. up until that point that it started crashing, nothing was changed on the PC. MS 'Patch Tuesday' added a whole slew of updates, but none of them seemed to be related in any way to the video driver.
Nonetheless, something went south in a hurry and luckily I have it corrected.

[WalkinTarget]

The saga continues !!! I played for 2 hours last night with no issues whatsover. Just went to join a server today and didn't even get INTO the game (it crashed at the player selection screen).

Same 'Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding' message. :roll: :|

[Kenshin Himura]

The saga continues !!! I played for 2 hours last night with no issues whatsover. Just went to join a server today and didn't even get INTO the game (it crashed at the player selection screen).

Same 'Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding' message. :roll: :|
They just put out an update/patch, did steam install it when you went to boot up TF2?

[WalkinTarget]

Yep, it was a quick one, but this issue goes a LOT deeper than I anticipated. A Google search has turned up literally dozens of pages of guys in the same boat as me with no clear, definitive fix for ANY of them at this point.

Everything from turning off UAC, to removing one of your two sticks of RAM, to manually removing and adding the nvlddmkm file ... its just turned into this huge monster of a bug that I can't solve.

Latest attempt:
Removing Nvidia drivers from Safe Mode, then rebooting and adding the 163.69 drivers. That worked last night, but here we are 24 hours later and its still borked. I'm adding Driver Cleaner to the process to make sure all Nvidia crap is removed.

[Rand{CLR}]

Too bad you're not able to play. I joined Tails, and we hung out for awhile. After about half an hour, the place was rocking. And I had by far my best round, playing Heavy in B on Granary. At one point I had three guys dominated, and was just mowing them down. Took a spy to take me out, even though at one point I was the only guy there and was freaking out waiting for my very good medic help to show up. :D

-Rand

[Tails_Kitsune]

Too bad you're not able to play. I joined Tails, and we hung out for awhile. After about half an hour, the place was rocking. And I had by far my best round, playing Heavy in B on Granary. At one point I had three guys dominated, and was just mowing them down. Took a spy to take me out, even though at one point I was the only guy there and was freaking out waiting for my very good medic help to show up. :D

-Rand

Very fun rounds! I went Engineer a majority of the time, and half of the time, our team was pushing so offensively, I couldn't keep a useful teleporter up!! I kept having to re-build the entrances to our new spawn locations, and pushing the exits up! In one round, I had either 21 or 22 uses on the teleporter.

When there were too many Engys, I played Medic. It's a very fun class, and Rand, you are like a Medic's fullest dreams personified. Whether you knew it or not (I'm sure you did :D ) you were allowing me to heal you while staying completely free of harm. Healing from around corners, behind boxes, and the such is a God-send as a Medic. I was grinning as much as you were when you were dominating those three guys. :D

A lot of regulars were spreading the good word about Cain's Lair, so maybe we'll be seeing more guys coming back soon! :2thumbs: Best of luck getting TF2 functional again, WT. I don't really understand why it worked fine yesterday, though, and isn't now.

[Kenshin Himura]

Yep, it was a quick one, but this issue goes a LOT deeper than I anticipated. A Google search has turned up literally dozens of pages of guys in the same boat as me with no clear, definitive fix for ANY of them at this point.
I hate to hear that you're having this much trouble out of this, WalkinTarget. This may not be of much help, but, have you submitted a support ticket to Steam? I'm not too confident that they'd be able to fix it right away, but if they don't know anything about it, then they can't really address it.

Although an insta-fix would be great, getting the information to them would at least make it possible for them to look into and possibly get a fix out for it... Hopefully some time soon!

Best of luck in getting this fixed! :2thumbs:

[WalkinTarget]

OK, this looks to be a driver issue, not a game issue, as it occurred last night while I was in chat mode on Steam. I've knocked my CPU overclock down to 3.0 (from 3.2) and the game works again ... for how long, I'm not sure yet.

[Kenshin Himura]

OK, this looks to be a driver issue, not a game issue, as it occurred last night while I was in chat mode on Steam. I've knocked my CPU overclock down to 3.0 (from 3.2) and the game works again ... for how long, I'm not sure yet.
Cross your fingers! :D

[WalkinTarget]

Dug thru the Vista->Control Panel->Problem Reports applet and since 10/11 it has reported 32 instances of the following:

Video Hardware Error. A problem with your video hardware caused Windows to stop working correctly.

32 times in TWO DAYS !!! Now I'm certain I haven't tried to play TF2 that often, but it shows the card is getting worse and its not just in games now.

It's now happening every so often at the desktop in 2D .. hell, it just popped up as I typed this sentence, so it looks like not only do I have to RMA an eVGA 7900GT in my spare rig, but now my eVGA 8800GTS is down for the count as well !! Well, the hardware demons can kiss my @ss, as my 7900GS will still run TF2, soo .... :P

Now, I at least feel better knowing (not 100% sure, but eVGA will be getting a call from me on Monday) that I have a hardware issue, not a simple software issue.
I just tried to join the game, made it 20 feet before what feels like a massive lag spike hit .. I saw Tails enter the game as I lagged out, so I thought, welp, I'm not going to be any help to either team today.

Edit: Posted in the eVGA forums where there is a thread that started on 10/3 and, at 2 pages already, it seems this is another one with no fix other than possible bad RAM stick or flakey CPU.

[WalkinTarget]

Things that I have tried so far:

1) System Restore back to 10/9 when TF2 ran fine.

2) Driver rollback to last driver update

3) Driver uninstall/reinstall (163.69)

4) Driver uninstall (163.69 with Driver Cleaner in Safe Mode)

5) Driver update to 163.75

6) Turn off Vista Aero effects

7) Regedit to disable the TDR error reporting

8) Drop my e6600 OC - was at 3.2, now at 3.0

9) Dropped RAM voltage - was at 2.2v, now at 2.1

10) SATA driver rollback per eVGA tech suggestion.

11) Sacrificed virgin at a stone altar .. errr, no, didn't do this .. just daydreaming. But I do have some things yet to do:

1) Swap out RAM

2) Replace video card with another card

Let me state that at some point everyone looking at this is stating it was a Windows Update that caused it, and the updates occurred on 10/9 (MS Patch Tuesday). My issues started on 10/11, which leaves 10/10 as an unexplained day. If the updates were on the PC on the 10th, it should have started showing signs of the error then. I'll check my logs to verify that, but here's what I see almost all day long.

http://www.wtslair.com/Misc/viderror.jpg

[WalkinTarget]

:shock:

Wow, Carbon must have been right. In another thread he commented that he had several sticks of Buffalo Firestix go bad, and I've now swapped out my Buffalo with el-cheapo Super Talent DDR2-800 and played thru two rounds with NO PROBLEMS !!

I couldn't play more than 30 seconds previously, so I might just have this damn thing licked !! I should at least test the Buffalo RAM before a RMA, but I'm glad I at least had extra RAM to test out the theory.

See ya on the server in about an hour !!! :2thumbs:

[Tails_Kitsune]

Saw you on tonight! :2thumbs: I believed you stayed on for quite a few rounds, right? It was hard to keep up with all the chaos! :D

[CarbonFire]

Saw you on tonight! :2thumbs: I believed you stayed on for quite a few rounds, right? It was hard to keep up with all the chaos! :D
You kept blowing me up with stickies....so I think you were keeping up just fine :P :2thumbs:

That's ok, I made up for it by spoiling Bar's knifing antics on multiple occasions :twisted: (though I did succumb to them as well....no backup FTL :oops: )

:shock:

Wow, Carbon must have been right.
Don't act SO surprised....its been known to happen on occasion :wink:
Glad things are working out again. I know when that happened to me, I was ready to throw my stupid machine out the window till I figured it out.

[(DSP)-Bar]

:twisted:


Watch your six... I might be there.

[Tails_Kitsune]

Saw you on tonight! :2thumbs: I believed you stayed on for quite a few rounds, right? It was hard to keep up with all the chaos! :D
You kept blowing me up with stickies....so I think you were keeping up just fine :P :2thumbs:

Wha? I stickied you like...twice at Hydro. Heck, after that, the territory changed, I was trying my best to be Jeffro's medic buddy, and you kept blowing me up with stickies! :lol: Absolutely frustrating to keep within healing distance of a guy when you're lobbing stickies on him! :D

[WalkinTarget]

UPDATE

Awww crap ... I am once AGAIN having the dreaded 'Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding' error !!!

This is nuts !!! I installed CoH:OF and CAll of Duty 4 in the past week, and two nights ago got my first crash with the above error message. I know to look at my RAM first now, but this is ridiculous !!

Two sets of RAM bad in only 4 months time ?? I tried to see if anyone using the same MSI board had issues, but found nothing.

I guess I will try and lower the RAM voltage (its at 2.1 now, I'll try 2.0) and then run Memtest to see if I'm dealing with RAM again or possibly the TDR bug that is basically the same issue/error message.

Luckily, my Buffalo RAM came back from RMA on 12/26, so I have spare RAM to drop in there and get back to gaming. If this crap keeps up, I am retiring the Vista rig and I'll bring one of my XP rigs back into service. See, I knew there was a reason that I was buying good hardware for my other rigs !!
In this case, it pays to have a solid backup rig if you like to game like I like to game.

Memtest results to follow once I get home tonight.

[WalkinTarget]

Well now I am thoroughly confused .... Memtest reported no errors with the Super Talent RAM, but even to be safe, I lowered the voltage from 2.1 to 2.05 and dropped the NB voltage from 1.5 to 1.45.

I'd be willing to bet this doesn't solve anything though ... I'll try another game to see if its just CoH that is causing the crash, but I have my doubts whether this problem will ever go away 100%.