HELP! 'Display Driver stopped responding and has recovered' error

[McSteviee]

I have been getting this error ever since playing the BF3 Beta, and am now getting it in the full version.

The screen freezes after a very few minutes of playing and then it throws me back to the game browser. BF3.exe is still running but cannot be accessed and game manager says I am still in the game. Windows then reports the error in the title.

I can play BC2 at max settings all day no problems but can't even play BF3 at medium for more than a few minutes.

System specs:
i5 2500K @ 4.4GHz
Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3 motherboard, bios F2
Corsair CPU cooler
2x 4GB Mushkin Blackline PC12800
Gigabyte GTX560ti
Antec 300 with 2 fans on high
Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit

Things I have tried:

Removing RAM sticks alternately
Re-installing GPU and motherboard drivers
Setting Nvidia control panel power management to Performance
Checking temps with HWMonitor (all ok)

Things I have not tried:

OS re-install
Editing registry for GPU timeout settings
Throwing the whole thing out the window

Can anyone help me please, thanks in advance for any replies.

[Rambo]

Re: HELP! 'Display Driver stopped responding and has recovered' error

Yeah i get it too,"nvidia kernel has stop responding"

You will have to wait for dice and nvidia to work out the bugs but yes its not good!.

[McSteviee]

Re: HELP! 'Display Driver stopped responding and has recovered' error

Thing is Rambo, even though it only happens for me in BF3 the interwebs is full of people getting the same issue with many different games and AMD cards too.

Been waiting a long time for BF3 and 4 minutes at a time just doesn't cut it.

[Basil.]

Re: HELP! 'Display Driver stopped responding and has recovered' error

Are you updating your drivers from the cd that came with your MB or are you getting updated drivers from Gigabyte and Nvidia website. Have you tried playing with your cpu at stock speed

[CptainCrunch]

Re: HELP! 'Display Driver stopped responding and has recovered' error

Its best to be using the latest beta driver from Nvidia that is for BF3.

Then, I havent had this problem, but it just so happens I was reading a list of fixes this morning and they suggested turning off Ambient Occlusion.

To check that;

Right click on your desktop and select NVIDIA CONTROL PANEL
Click on MANAGE 3D SETTINGS
You will see the setting in the box, should be at the top. Turn it off if its on.

Try out the game and see how it goes.

[McSteviee]

Re: HELP! 'Display Driver stopped responding and has recovered' error

Thanks for the replies guys.

All drivers were downloaded from the Nvidia (285.62 and previously 285.38 beta) and Gigabyte websites and ambient occlusion is off.

I bought my motherboard/cpu/cooler/ram as a pre-overclocked bundle from Aria which has a years warranty on the overclock so I haven't tried dropping the multiplier back to stock yet but will give it a go.

[McSteviee]

Re: HELP! 'Display Driver stopped responding and has recovered' error

I tried stock cpu speed and there is an improvement but I can still only manage about one round and then boom.

I am going to try to remove the mild factory overclock on my GPU and see if that does anything but I suspect that it is a software issue.

I will also try a clean install of the OS on my old HDD and see if that fixes anything.

Thanks again.

[McSteviee]

Re: HELP! 'Display Driver stopped responding and has recovered' error

Solved! (Pretty much).

I used MSI Afterburner to downclock my GPU core from 900MHz to 850MHz.

I will lose about 5% performance but at least it is working now – I still don't know why though.

[eradicator8]

Re: HELP! 'Display Driver stopped responding and has recovered' error

I get the same error message in BC2 as I am still unable to start up BF3 due to Origin or whatever. And basically the problem showed its ugly face when I updated my GFX driver to 285,62 which they said would improve the overall graphics - RIGHTTTT!!!
I run with a 560 TI so the HW should not be the problem. I also got it with my old 280 and that also required a new driver for it to work properly.
You just have to wait for NVIDIA to send out a new driver and hope for the best.

Hay maybe it is just karma (ref. your name)

[LunaTiK TunaLiK]

Re: HELP! 'Display Driver stopped responding and has recovered' error

Did you check your video card temps under load before clocking it down? What are the temps like right now, under load.

I've been having a number of crashes, this was one but very rarely. I flashed my bios and haven't had any problems.

[McSteviee]

Re: HELP! 'Display Driver stopped responding and has recovered' error

My temps were under 60 deg before underclocking, so no probs there. I still get the problem ocassionally but only on the desktop and browser so far.

I only tried the fix because it worked for others and I had tried most other things.

Did you flash your motherboard bios or your graphics card?