GTX970 issue

[Bizman]

This has been going on for since I bought a GTX970 from a friend a year and a half ago. At startup and occasionally in between when I open a new program the screen goes dark for a second and a message says “Display driver stopped working and has recovered”. It happened with the latest drivers back then and it still does. My workaround was to use older drivers but now they're becoming harder to find and I suppose that since the 970 still is sold as new using three year old drivers is not the best solution.

So far the only solution has been the old drivers. Not long ago I decided to give the latest drivers a chance and updated. What puzzles me is that for the first session all works fine, the problems arise the next day or so. For the current issue I've double checked the power settings in Device Manager, Power Management and Nvidia control panel as well as added TdrDelay in the Registry. I also changed the power supply. Further, I took a closer look at the BIOS and set the PCIe speed to 100 manually since I had overclocked my CPU. Again, it worked for hours until the next boot. Then I reset the BIOS to "optimal", only changing my memory speed settings manually to those recommended by the maker.

What should I try next?

Latest DxDiag attached.

[Skuzzy]

I noted your computer has 4GB of system RAM with almost as much used in swap space.  You may have resource issues.  That can manifest in many different ways.

[Bizman]

I noted your computer has 4GB of system RAM with almost as much used in swap space.  You may have resource issues.  That can manifest in many different ways.

Huh? Isn't system RAM the sticks? I should have 8 GB as it says in my DxDiag:

Memory: 8192MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 8190MB RAM
Page File: 2614MB used, 13764MB available

The page file might be that big because of having powered the system on for the time I had my breakfast. It had plenty of time to fill it with Avast update files...

The video card has 4 GB.

[wrench]

older drivers

https://www.techspot.com/drivers/manufacturer/nvidia_geforce/

[Bizman]

Thanks Wrench, finding really old drivers from the Nvidia site was fiddly. That site really helps!

However, as I said, using three years old drivers on a card that is still available feels like not unleashing the full power of it.

That said, what is the latest driver version before they launched the 10xx series?

[wrench]

Hi Bizman, hope this helps. GeForce 10 series article with card release dates. Looks like 368.22 was last driver before 10 series support.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_10_series

[Skuzzy]

Huh? Isn't system RAM the sticks? I should have 8 GB as it says in my DxDiag:
The page file might be that big because of having powered the system on for the time I had my breakfast. It had plenty of time to fill it with Avast update files...

The video card has 4 GB.

Sorry.  I totally goofed on the system RAM.

[Max]

Sorry.  I totally goofed on the system RAM.

That's IT for YOU, buster!!!

[Skuzzy]

That's what I get for trying to answer questions before i finish my first cup of coffee.  I know better.

Still, the error is one normally associated with resource issues.  Avast might be the culprit.  It could be interfering with texture creation.

Do you ever get the error after a fresh reboot of the computer?

[Bizman]

Do you ever get the error after a fresh reboot of the computer?

Yes, about every second boot. This morning it happened, now in the evening I can throw anything in without issues. Yesterday it happened both in the morning and evening with the same settings as today. When the error happens, almost any starting program can trigger it including browsers, Skype, Notepad, everything, each one usually only once.  I always shut my computer down when being away, usually checking my mail and the forums in the morning and having some more activity in the evening. Sleep and Hibernation are disabled.

I took a look at Windows logs and there's a dozen of Error Reporting 1001 LiveKernelEvent notifications featuring the exactly same time stamp.  The Action Center has an error report for the times when there's been the "Stopped and recovered" notification popup, matching one of the log time stamps. So not all log entries create an error report. This might be because of the TdrDelay registry entry I created, letting the system recover before a report is triggered.

What annoys me most is this randomness. Every time I make a change, the system works flawlessly for the rest of the session, or even the whole evening including occasional reboots. Then it hits with every single starting program. Aargh! 

[Bizman]

The issue seems to be solved. Thanks for the link to older drivers, Wrench. 

What I did was to clean all existing drivers with DDU (again, if I may add) and install 368.81 dated July 14, 2016. The logic behind choosing that one is that the GTX 10## series was launched after the release of the 368.## drivers which made me think that the drivers were designed with the GTX 9## as the primary platform. Reading this thread back I noticed that Wrench thinks similarly so I'm not alone with this logic. As the 368.81 was the last of the 368.## driver series I also assumed that all known issues were fixed without no major changes to favour the GTX 10## cards.

Thanks for all inputters. 

[Chalenge]

I seem to remember a Microsoft recommendation on a registry change to fix this.

EDIT: Not sure if it's the same one that helped and it may be of no use to you since you have it fixed . . .

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2665946/display-driver-stopped-responding-and-has-recovered-error-in-windows-7

[Bizman]

That's the one, Chalenge. I did that according to another site giving the same advise which I later could confirm as legit on the link you provided. And it didn't help. The only working solution for me seems to be using older drivers.

Thanks anyway, it's good to have links and tricks gathered in one place in case someone needs them.