Video blacks out occasionally for a few seconds

I installed the 196.21 version and that's when I started getting the black outs/frozen computer.  I reverted back to the 186.xx version I had...would rather the flicker screen than the whole black out thing.  WIsh dell would come up with a solution to this!

DELL DOES NOT HAVE A SOLUTION - this is a S/W driver issue for these boards - GO TO THE NVIDIA DRIVERS WEBSITE and get the latest V197.13. Believe me I have had this problem for 3 months and the solution was the latest driver S/W from NVIDIA - Dell cannot help you other than replacing the graphics board with a different model. (They even replaced mine with a new-same model and still no-go) Dell has to wait for NVIDIA to release their drivers; so the faster (and possibly better) solution is always to go directly to the source! Why do you think there are so many versions of this driver in such a short period of time???

Hi everybody,

i am new in this site and i am writing from Italy. In primis i excuse me for my poor english. I buyed xps 8000 last year with core i 7 860 and gt 220. The problem of "black video" occasionally with message "Display Driver NVIDEA Windows Kernel Ver 186.27 has stopped responding and has recovered successfull" accurred to me but never during games It happened about 4-5 time during the day.

Then i decided to install the driver 196.21 from nvidia site over the old 186. No problem for two day and then i have installed(always over the 196.21) the beta 197.13.It is a week i never see the error message. I don't know if it is a case of dell xps shipped in Italy "better" than the "americans" for example (in italy i have eared of many cases of the same gt220 problems in Packard bell).

Try to install this drivers over the old it is possible that works also for you.

Hi.

nVidia has been struggling lately with a long history of manufacturing problems...from the BGA overheat issue with it's mobile platforms to issues with its latest family of discrete desktop graphics offerings.  Perhaps they need to take a pause and contemplate their design and QC processes...they seem to be rushing product to market before it has been tested thoroughly. 

Meanwhile....I, like many others, have switched to ATI and have been delighted to discover that the current ATI offerings are vastly superior to nVidia, in both hardware and drivers. 

Update:  My Studio XPS 435T/9000 ran without a single "Display driver ......stopped responding ......" error message from 1/19/10 until 3/28/10 while using the 196.21 driver.  After the error last Sunday I updated to the 197.13 driver without further incidents.  FWIW, the 3/28 incident occurred while I was moving .jpg images from one folder to another, something I have done many times in the last two months.  However, I was unable to replicate the incident.

Dell Studio XPS 435T/9000, 8G Ram, i7 CPU 920@2.67,GT220/1024MB, Integrated Audio Dell S2209W Monitor with DVI cable, Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit, bios A14

On March 23rd I wrote that I could reproducibly trigger the GT220 freeze by opening several simultaneous instances of mediaplayer classic and fiddling with the windows, sizes, etc.

In the mean time, I have installed the official 197.13 drivers over my  existing 196.21 drivers, and I have experienced no issues ever since. I was not able to reproduce the problem, even running more than 10 instances of MPC at the same time and playing around with the windows for several minutes. Although one should be very careful with statements about complex issues like this, it seems like finally the problem has been completely resolved by the latest driver update, at least in my case...

NVidia GT 220 1 GB RAM in  a Vostro 430 running Windows 7 / 64 bits.

I installed the 197.13 driver and immediately got two computer freezes where the keyboard and mouse stop responding and I have to force a shutdown.   However, I have not gotten a blackout where you get the message that the display driver has stopped responding.  My triggers for a blackout was to use print preview or to play media on citrix.  I tried both and so far no issues.  Someone said that Hulu at full screen would trigger it, so I tried that.  No problems.  I'm not saying that the problems have gone away yet, because I have not used this driver long enough yet.

I read elsewhere on the forum that the computer freeze (no keyboard or mouse response) is actually a hd freeze.  But they were talking about xps laptops.  They pointed to a few possible culprits like Adobe Flash player 10.x or Sound Blaster.  My freeze didn't start until a month or two ago, so I thought it could be possible that could be Adobe.  So I uninstalled it and loaded in the beta version.  Time will tell if that fixed it or not.

But so far, I'm hopeful with the 197.13 driver.

I also had the black out problem for a few months. Installed NVIDIA 197.13 driver and have not had any video problems since.

Just wanted to report back in that I haven't had anymore video blackouts with the NVidia card 'not responding' message and no more computer freezes!  Yeah!  This was with the update of the latest NVidia driver and uninstalling the Adobe Flasher Player 10xx I think it was called.  Its in my previous post.  but now everything is good.

All,

We have verified on several captured PCs that the latest 197.45 fixes the issue.
Windows 7 32bit
Windows 7 64bit

Follow my instructions here to install the driver. Once finished, please post your results.

I had a volume degrade problem, as I have had in the past.  I called technical support, and they were able to fix it after a while.  I also have reported a problem with my external hard drive and the eSATA port on my XPS 9000 desktop.  I asked the tech to see if this was a software problem or not.  I had eliminated the port on the external hard drive, since I was able to connect the eSATA cable to a laptop.  Bottom line: the tech killed my mouse by mistake and could not fix the problem.  He tried to convince me that it was a hardware problem with my mouse.  I was on the phone with the tech for 4 1/2 hours.   If you ever tried to control a computer without a mouse, you know how difficult it is.

Afterwards, I connected my mouse to another computer, and it worked okay.  I took the other mouse from the other computer and tried to connect with the Dell desktop, but that did not work.  The next day another tech tried to help me by doing a system restore, which did not work.  He suggested that I reinstall Windows 7.  As for the eSATA problem, he suggested a new motherboard.  Since the external hard drive's USB and Firewire ports do work with my Dell, I rejected the new motherboard, fearing more problems.

During my conversations with both techs, they put me on hold many times for many minutes.  They were either consulting the manual or talking to their supervisor for advice.

Long story made short.  I paid a local tech guy I have used before to help me.  It cost me $225, but I have my computer working again. The Dell tech had actually caused the problem with the mouse.   I bought a three year contract with Dell, and I now have a low opinion of the qualifications of the techs.

I am having the same problem with a new XPS 9000 with an ATI Radeon HD5770 graphics card.  Screen blacks out or gets filled with green blocks and if it recovers get the error message saying the Display Drivers stopped responding but have recovered.

Walked through steps of uninstalling and reinstalling drivers, upgrading drivers, etc,.  It still does it.  It doesn't seem to mater what I am doing.  About 10 minutes in even if nothing is open.  Most of the time it recovers, but occasionally it will freeze and sometimes restart.

Update 6/28/2010

After making the above post I was contacted by Chris M. from Dell with a link to a VBIOS for AMD Radeon 5770 dated 5/2/10.  I installed the updated BIOS and have had no problems for two weeks now.  Back to being a happy Dell owner.  Thanks Chris.

FYI the link to the VBIOS for AMD Radeon 5770 is:  http://support.us.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&releaseid=R267410&formatcnt=0&libid=0&typeid=-1&dateid=-1&formatid=-1&source=-1&fileid=393372

Thank you,

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Reason: Ati 5770 Lockups

Update on my similar problem with an AMD Radeon 5770 posted to my original post.