Troubleshooting "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered." message

[Seizure1990]

Hey all,

 

I've been having issues where I frequently get "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered." messages in the Windows Event Viewer, along with the typical behavior. The game I am playing will crash (as an unrelated side note, Rocket League happens to be an amazingly well coded game, and completely recovers from the error once my display has returned, rather than CTDing. Why can't all major dev companies do this???), my screen will go black for a second, and then everything will return back to normal once Windows has got everything under control again. I always keep my drivers updated, and this has been going on for a long time.

 

In the Windows Event Viewer, these driver errors are always followed by one or two "DistributedCOM" errors. I am aware that such errors are often benign and can be ignored, but since they show up alongside these driver errors, I am assuming there is a direct relation, and perhaps they mean something or can provide some useful debugging leads? HEre is the contents:

The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID 
{D63B10C5-BB46-4990-A94F-E40B9D520160}
 and APPID 
{9CA88EE3-ACB7-47C8-AFC4-AB702511C276}
 to the user [COMPUTER NAME]\[MY USERNAME] SID (S-1-5-21-1154504303-1956587262-1197989814-1000) from address LocalHost (Using LRPC) running in the application container Unavailable SID (Unavailable). This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.

 

My specs:

• OS: Windows 10 Pro
• CPU: Intel i5 6600 (3.3 GHz)
• Motherboard: ASRock H170A-X1/3.1
• RAM: 16GB DDR4
• GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 980
• PSU: EVGA G3 650 (Brand new)

 

Things I've already tried doing or checking:

• Made sure "PCIe Link Management" in Windows Power Settings was off
• Set "Power Management Mode" to "Prefer Maximum Performance" in NVIDIA Control Panel
• Performed a clean reinstall of GPU drivers
• FULL hardware diagnostics (overnight RAM checks, chkdsk /r, general stress tests for computer hardware, PSU is brand new as I replaced my old faulty one)
• run sfc /scannow
• Checked temperatures of hardware while I play games. Nothing ever overheats during gameplay. Rocket League, which I have this error with frequently, peaks at around 60C on my GPU

 

Things I've not yet done:

• Underclocked my graphics card
  • This is something which is actually suggested in full seriousness online. Apparently, it fixes this issue in some cases. That seems awfully stupid though, and even if it did work in my case, seems like it's masking an underlying problem, not fixing it. My GPU should be able to run at full  
• Set a delay on the Windows TDR (Timeout Detection and Recovery) for the GPU driver to 8 seconds
  • It seems Windows has some system which detects when drivers stop responding, and attempts to reset them. This is basically what's kicking in and resetting my GPU driver randomly. I haven't tried messing with this yet, because I'm worried I'll just be masking some underlying issue, as with above, and would like to try and see if it can be fixed otherwise.*

 

*Unless someone can show me that TDR its self is actually what is broken here, or that it's an issue with the driver, but everything else is fine, which might be the case, since my games are running perfectly fine up to the very moment that I get these errors, so it's not like my graphics are spazzing out or freezing, and THEN this all kicks in to try and recover it. However, I'm still suspicious it might be something else mucking things up, in spite of everything seeming to work on the surface, graphically speaking.

 

Thanks for any help or suggestions!

Edited November 11, 2018 by Seizure1990

[Seizure1990]

Hi, so, two year bump: Still having this issue. I've done googling online, but its very hard to get any useful info. Half the results are individual threads that were never resolved, or were determined to be an issue that isn't relevant to me. The other half are generic "try this list of fixes" things that I've mostly done and still not had any success.

 

This problem seems to occur with some games way, way more often than others, and it doesn't seem to be related to anything like heat, time computer has been on, or anything. I'm almost certain it's a graphics or settings issue, but my Nvidia drivers are always kept up to date. I'm really at a loss here on what to do, or how to narrow down the problem. In the time since I've posted, my computer has been taken apart and rebuild for other reasons, and problem persists.

 

Please, this issue is driving me bonkers, what is causing the instability on my GPU/driver?

Edit: Just noticed I didn't include this in my original post, but the CTDs are almost always accompanied by the following Windows error log item:

Quote

Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered.