XPS 8700, new SSD, Windows 10 Pro Display driver amdkmdap stopped

Question

Good day everyone,

Earlier this month I completed installation of a new Samsung SSD and fresh installation of Windows 10 Pro. The last 3 days I have experienced the following problem twice after several hours of uptime. Roughly every 6 - 8 seconds after the problem begins the event log records the following:

Source Display Event ID 4101 Task Category None
Warning "Display driver amdkmdap stopped responding and has successfully recovered".

The display becomes erratic and unreadable and eventually goes blank. Mouse, keyboard and Ctrl-Alt-Delete have no effect, so I end up powering off the system. Before researching the error, I used Piriform's Speecy System Information Tool to check on the overall system health. Speecy provided temperatures of the CPU, Storage Devices and Graphics, and I noticed that immediately after boot up the following:

CPU - Intel Core i7 4770 @ 3.40GHz 77F / Haswell 22nm Technology
Graphics - SAMUNG (1920x1080@60Hz) / 1024MB ATI AMD Radeon HD 7500 Series (Dell) 92F
Storage - 239GB Samsung SSD 860 PRO 256GB (SATA (SSD)) 79F / 931GB Seagate ST1000DM003-CH162 (SATA) 74F

After waiting 5 minutes, I opened Speecy again and temperatures were CPU - 82F, Graphics - 97F, SSD - 85F, and Seagate - 87F. 5 minutes later CPU and Storage were relatively unchanged, but Graphics was 105F. Waited another 5 minutes and Graphics was 108F. After another 3 minutes, the Graphics was 112F. This was all with no other applications running, so I powered down normally.

Research on the net showed 3 possibilities -

Update the AMD driver (current driver was MS provided in the 1903 build)
Replace the graphics card (except for the SSD all other parts of the system are 5+ years old)
Accumulation of dust is causing overheating (when I installed the SSD I cleaned pretty well with a mini vac but did not blow it out with compressed air can)

I have run onboard diagnostics at boot up and everything checks out OK. However, during system operation I rarely hear the fan(s) running. Also I don't do any gaming so high end graphics are not necessary. I am going to look at Catalyst Control Center and Windows settings for lowering the power consumption/requirements for the graphics card.

At this point I'm not sure what the problem is, but can't keep having the display go haywire and have to power down to get rid of the problem. Hopefully someone else in the Community has had this or a similar issue and can provide some advice. Thanks very much.

Best wishes,

Duane

RoHe · Accepted Answer

If the video card has its own fan, make sure that fan is clean, turns freely and is actually working.

You could remove the add-in card and connect the monitor to either the onboard DisplayPort or HDMI port, whichever the monitor supports. If that solves the problem, you can either continue using the onboard port or maybe try a new video card.

And read What to do if Amdkmdap stops responding on Windows 10. There may be other solutions too since this seems to be a common issue in Win 10.

ddgarner8349 · Answer

Hi Ron,

I ended up pulling the card out and giving it a good cleaning. The fan is a 1 blade unit and was pretty dusty. I did not separate the fan from the card but is now dust free. After putting the card back in I left the cover off and ran boot diagnostics which were all good. I also observed the fan spinning. Temperature range is much better, so far not going above 100F, although it is still higher than the CPU, SSD and HDD. Cover is back on now and I'll continue to monitor the temps over the next week or so. I feel reasonably certain that the display driver messages were a result of high temperatures caused by accumulation of dust inside the fan enclosure and the only way to get it clean is to remove it.

I also read the post you provided a link to. Some observations from that post: I opened the AMD Catalyst Center and went to the AMD website and poked around there and also checked for driver updates. The AMD website only offered updates to Catalyst Software Suite and Radeon Software Crimson Edition Beta. Not fooling with a beta driver so I checked Dell's website and their driver was a version older than the one that I have which came from MS with the W10 Pro install.

That brings up another interesting question. Other than the display driver issue, I have had zero problems with all of the MS loaded drivers. Before I did the clean install, I went to the Dell Support web site and downloaded all drivers for Win 10 x64 for the XPS 8700. The Windows install completed and never once asked for any Dell drivers. At this point, the only software from Dell that I have loaded is Support Assist. So the question is "To Dell or not to Dell"??? or Would be interested in your take.

I'll mark your post as the solution after I monitor the card and driver for a week. Thanks again for the reply.

Best regards,

Duane

RoHe · Answer

Canned air is always a good way to clean out dust bunnies without having to disassemble too much. Now make sure the PC's case vents are clean too.

Most of the time Windows installs suitable drivers, but they're typically "generic" for the hardware it discovers. You have look in Device Manager to see if anything is marked with a red X or yellow ! or if there's any "unknown device" listed.

OEMs (Dell included) frequently install modified versions of hardware, especially video cards, so that may mean they tweaked the drivers for their version of that piece of hardware. So if a piece of hardware and/or a driver supplied by Windows starts misbehaving, it could be time to install the OEM's own version. Obviously, an OEM driver probably won't make any difference if the hardware is overheating and/or otherwise failing...

Keep us posted on how things go...

ddgarner8349 · Answer

I'm pretty sure the display driver issue was the accumulated dust on the card and in particular the fan. Monitoring over the last week or so reveals temps don't exceed about 95F for the video card. The SSD, HDD and CPU all are at or below what the video card is reading. So I think we can put that one to bed.

Regarding the drivers, Dell Support Assist is showing 0 urgent and 2 recommended drivers, Intel RST and Realtek 8111E Network Driver. Since I'm not having any issues with wired or wireless network and no problems with my SSD or SATA HDD, I've decided to hold off on the Dell drivers unless problems arise or they are marked Urgent. I'm also a little leery on RST having seen other posts regarding the Intel RST (some suggesting problems and others saying it is fixed).

Since MS removed the Homegroup networking in their recent builds of Win 10, the only recurring issue I have now is my home networking and keeping shared folders visible to others in my domain, in particular getting the FDPHOST service to start and stay running (it is set to Automatic-Delayed). It's working most of the time now but to get here has really been a grind jumping through all kinds of hoops in Windows 10 to get it semi-working most of the time. I have 3 machines, 2 Dell laptops (1 Win 7 Pro and 1 Win 10 Pro) and the XPS 8700 running Win 10 Pro. The Win 7 laptop is going to my grandson but was the only machine that could see the other 2.

What I did find was use Computer Management running as administrator to set parameters for the services and create the Network Shares, which worked better than using File Manager. The following services have to be modified -

Function Discovery Provider Host - set to Automatic-Delayed and Restart the Service on any failure
Function Discovery Resource Publication - Automatic (Trigger Start) and Restart the Service on any failure
SSDP Discovery - Automatic and Restart the Service on any failure
UPnP Device Host - Automatic and Restart the Service on any failure

These were the only services I had to modify, but other services that are required but were not modified are Computer Browser and TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper. There may be others but these are ones I know for sure. Its odd that MS has taken out Homegroup but the Peer Networking Grouping and Peer Networking Identity Manager services still refer to Homegroup operations.

More importantly, I found that if both machines were not connected in the same way (wired or wireless) to my NetGear AC1600 R6260 Wi-fi router, the connections could not be made even though the router shows the devices attached. My router has both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands active and I have both Win 10 machines now connected to the 5GHz band. I have not tried connecting one to the 2.4GHz and the other to the 5GHz, but I have tried switching the laptop to ethernet and the desktop to wi-fi, and they do not work in that configuration either.

So the big takeaway here for home users is to set up all services and shares through Computer Management running as Administrator AND have all devices connected to the router in the same manner (All wired OR all wireless).

Hope you all have a Merry Christmas.

Best regards,

Duane

Nahum Gomez · Answer

you have my solution here.   https://answers.microsoft.com/es-es/windows/forum/all/soluci%c3%b3n-el-controlador-de-pantalla-dej%c3%b3/c2f1eb8c-f0c5-4d11-bdd6-b2cbe466453b

RoHe · Answer

@ddgarner8349 - Glad you got the video card issue sorted out.

You could always install an inexpensive slot fan next to the video card, assuming that slot is empty. I paid ~$6 for a brand new fan on eBay in October. It's pretty quiet and exhausts hot air out the back of the PC. It kept the video card "cool" after the card's own fan failed. Otherwise the card just overheated and crashed the PC. I've retired that ancient PC now, but the cheap fan was able to keep it going while I ordered a new PC and then transferred my files over.

The fan connects directly to the PSU via a 4-pin power connector which that PSU had. But if your PSU only has SATA power connectors, simple 4-pin>SATA connectors are available for cheap too.

BTW: Keep in mind that PCs on your 2.4GHz network can't see or share with PCs on your 5 GHz network, even though they're all using the same router.

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XPS 8700, new SSD, Windows 10 Pro Display driver amdkmdap stopped

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