Fix for nVidia “Driver has stopped responing”

In the coming weeks two giant FPS games will be released; The incredible “Battlefield 3″ from DiCE Sweden and the latest incarnation in the Call of Duty series; “Modern Warfare 3″.

I’ve been using a Radeon card but decided to switch with my son as his PSU wasn’t sufficient to run his nVidia 260 GTX.

But lo an behold as the new card caused me the dreaded TDR (Timeout Detection & Recovery) error; the screen would freeze, sometimes for a couple of seconds and at times forcing me to do a hard reset. The former prompting a “Display driver stopped responding and has recovered”

Display driver stopped responding and has been recovered

This is a well known problem that has plagued thousands of Windows Vista and Windows 7 (I am on Win7 x64) users.

Suggestions for fixing this issue are various, ranging from editing the registry, faulty PSU’s, bad RAM or overheating.

None of them worked for me… until I stumbled upon an obscure post (unfortunately I cannot remember the original URL).

The suggestion was to use an nNvidia tweaking utility called “PowerMizer Manager” found here:

http://somemorebytes.com/wp/index.php/software/nvpmmanager/

The operational procedure for fixing this issue for me was very easy: Just run the program and set to “[fixed performance level]” with the setting as shown in the image below [Max. Perf / Min. PowerSave]

nVidia TDR fix

I hope this post will be helpful to some of you experiencing this annoying problem. But a disclaimer is that you do this at your own peril.

Fingers crossed my computer’s been up and running for 24h now without any problem.

Battlefield3 – Gameplay from the Game Developers Conference 2011

 

Incredible 4 minute long gameplay video

Information on the upcoming game from Dice: Battlefield 3

Battlefield 2 is my favourite FPS game of all time , and I am thrilled about what I’ve read about Battlefield 3 (Coming Q4 2011)..

Here’s some info from the people at
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/

A torrent of new Battlefield 3 details have come surging onto the web.

Retail listings have already leaked a whole load of information about the new game, including the fact it will feature battles in Paris, Tehran and New York.

The Game Informer website also reported on 64 player multiplayer for PC, but BestBuy says console multiplayer will support only 24 players.

The real meat arrives this morning from a spread in the latest issue of the US retail mag, however, which has been neatly summarised by NeoGAF forum users.

Here’s what they scribbled down:

 

 

 

• Aiming for CY Q4 2011 release
• Concept for BF3 has been in the works for years, waiting on proper tech to seamlessly come together
• Frosbite 2.0 is the culmination of this tech, entirely re-written
• Lighting sounds neat, one “probe” contains more lighting information than an entire BFBC2 level.
• Level destruction is going to be “believable” but basically everything is destructible.
• Character animations powered by ANT, what EA Sports uses.
• AI characters and multiplayer characters have different animation sets
• No more “gliding” animations that look off, animation realism is a focus
• Captured their own war audios (bullets, tanks, helicopters, etc) at different distances to ensure realism
• Better audio cues for certain actions, more easily able to listen for threats
• Plan on better, more immediate post release content
• More unlocks than BFBC2
• Dice trying to find a good balance between customization of your character and not having “pink rabbit hat(s)”
• 4 classes
• Will talk about squads “later”
• Looking into a theater mode but can’t talk about it
• Will have co-op
• There will be a kill-cam but it can be turned off
• BF3′s team is almost twice as big as the team for BFBC2
• They want the pacing of the single player mode to be balanced, with highs and lows. Makes the comparison to a song vs a guitar solo.
• Part of the single player mode takes place in Sulaymaniyah – Iraqi Kurdistan.
• “F***” will be used often, so M rated for sure
• There will be an earthquake in a level. The destruction sounds very impressive. 7 story building collapses, looks very well done
• Significant narrative that goes with the SP mode
• More than one setting, you’re not in the middle east for the whole game
• PC version is lead version
• Why 64 players for PC only? No complains from the console crowd.
• No mod tools at release. Maybe none down the line either. Frosbite 2.0 is complex and mods tools would have to be dumbed down, so does Dice really want to put their time to that or would it be better spent elsewhere?
• Original story, not based on Bad Company at all.

 

more info on features here:

Graphics driver problem in Windows 7 ….. and some Battlefield Bad Company 2.

I got a new computer a couple of days ago and had an odd problem that took me great effort to find a solution to. In Windows 7 (64-bit) from time to time there were graphics problems – suddenly the screen would go blank (usually white) or the computer would freeze for a couple of seconds, then a message would pop up stating “ Th Display driver has stopped responding…(and has been restored). Updating the drivers did litte to fix the problem. Here’s however what did the trick:

Open CCC and switch to ATI Overdrive
Unlock and enable Overdrive
Go to Options/Profiles/Profile Manager and create a new profile called, let’s say, STABLE.
Save the new profile. But DO NOT ACTIVATE the profile.
Now go to C:\Users\{YourUserName}\AppData\Local\ATI\ACE\Profiles folder ( I assume C: is your system drive )
Note: You should have ” show hidden files ” turned on to see the folder.
Open the .xml file named STABLE with notepad.
Change the values of the idle Core clock and Memory clock speeds below

Feature name=”CoreClockTarget_0″
Property name=”Want_0″ value=”40000″ note: previous value should be “15700″

Feature name=”MemoryClockTarget_0″
Property name=”Want_0″ value=”90000″ note: previous value should be “30000″
Save the file and close it.
Go back to CCC and activate the profile. This will make the card idle at 400 MHz core clock and 900 MHz memory clock.

The speed change is immediate. You can see the speeds onder CCC Overdrive section.

Please note this change increases graphic card temperature by 6 to 7 degrees C at idle.

Many thanks to the poster “StarStrike” who supplied the information in this thread on the AMD Game Forums.
Note that the mentioned “CCC” in the post is the ATI Cataclyst Control Centre and thus refers to ATI (Radeon) graphics cards.

…

Battlefield Bad Company 2:

As a fan of the original Battlefield (2) series I was eager to try out this game, made by fellow Swedes Dice.  I had been playing Modern Warfare 2 since it came out but I finally gave it up due to the ridiculous amount of cheaters, who have literally killed the PC-version of this otherwise great, fast-paced fps - but for the last couple of months I hade been returning to the old, but still awesome Battlefield 2.

To cut it short BF: BC2 is an exellent game where cooperation really pays off. Although the server-system is still quirky the game is heartily recommended – where the menacing armour forces you run from cover to cover

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