8600M GT Driver constantly crashing

Question

I've been having lots of problems with my graphics card pretty much from day 1. I'll be playing a game (usually Team Fortress 2, Guild Wars or Call of Duty 4) and then suddenly my game will freeze, sometimes for about 3 seconds, other times it will crash the game completely. When I restart the game, my frame rate takes a big hit, making TF2 and COD4 unplayable and while Guild Wars is still playable, lots of freezing and graphical anomalies are noticable. It is also noticable with my Windows Energy screensaver. On a fresh restart, the screensaver is very smooth, however, after the crash, it is very laggy and not smooth at all. The windows problem solver has popped up numerous times telling me that "nvlddmkm" has crashed and recovered, and has also recommended me to install a new graphic card driver. I have tried a few drivers, including the Dell ones, and the same problem happens over and over.

Is there anything at all I can do to stop this from happening? Are there any drivers out there that won't crash on me every 20 minutes? Any help is appreciated.

My Specs are:

Vostro 1500

Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 2.00GHz, 800MHz FSB, 2MB L2-Cache
3072MB DDR2 RAM (667MHz)
256MB nVidia GeForce 8600M GT
160GB (5400RPM) SATA HDD
8x DVD+-RW Drive

ejn63 · Answer

Have you run the Dell diagnostics on the video chip (F12 at powerup to get in)?

Climhazard · Answer

Just did a run now, said that everything passed.

I'm considering trying the Dell drivers again, because this problem seems to be getting worse and worse, I'm scared that my graphics card might get messed up if this driver keeps crashing. I don't know if I should be worried, but I have a feeling constant crashes can't be healthy for something. Any suggestions?

frankmalia · Answer

Hello mate, I just started a post about this,  try the oldest driver available on the dell web sit November 2007,  that seems to be the most stable,  newer ones are very irratic

ff7vincent · Answer

I have the same problem, in fact my graphics drivers chrashed while writing this message. It could be that all 8400M and 8600M chips are bad, but nvidia hasn't officaly confirmed it yet. I'd keep a watch on nvidia's site or engadget (where i heard about the fualty chips in the first place).

gigiipse · Answer

Most probably this is happening because microsoft changed the way it manages video memory. Search microsoft forums for a solution. There was a fix released by Microsoft that adresses this issue. Message Edited by gigiipse on 07-11-2008 05:39 AM

Climhazard · Answer

Cheers for all the feedback guys, it's much appreciated. I'm glad to hear that it's not only myself that is having these problems. I reinstalled the Dell drivers and played a few hours of games last night and this morning. I had a small driver crash while playing Guild Wars, but it recovered within a second and my FPS didn't take a hit. So although it still is crashing, it's not doing it as often and it's not killing my FPS.

All in all, I'll probably be able to live with that, but I'll post back if the crashes become more frequent or worse. Thanks again for the help.

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8600M GT Driver constantly crashing

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