Bizarre GPU Driver Crashes

[Supercrumpet]

Starting mid last week, I'd exit to the main menu of a game or close a game and after a few seconds, video drivers would appear to crash, wouldn't recover, and I'd have to restart my PC. This is my racing sim PC that's acting up, so I've only tried this with iRacing and Dirt Rally 2, but both exhibit this behavior. Oddly, once restarted, I can use my PC normally and while playing a game, everything runs perfectly.

 

Has anyone experienced anything like this? Any suggestions? I don't recall anything changing around the time of this issue starting.

[maddangerous]

Which rig in your sig is the sim rig?

 

I would start by checking the event viewer for entries around the time of the crash, and see if anything else other than the graphics driver crashing is happening.

 

Other than that, DDU remove and reinstall driver would be a good idea.

[The Pook]

What GPU? 

[Supercrumpet]

8 hours ago, maddangerous said:

Which rig in your sig is the sim rig?

 

I would start by checking the event viewer for entries around the time of the crash, and see if anything else other than the graphics driver crashing is happening.

 

Other than that, DDU remove and reinstall driver would be a good idea.

 

8 hours ago, The Pook said:

What GPU? 

 

Phoenix V3, so 2080 Ti.

 

I should have mentioned that I did check event viewer and it mentioned the 'ol nvlddmkm, which I interpret to be video drivers. I uninstalled with DDU and installed newest drivers; behavior didn't change at all.

[The Pook]

what does "appears to crash" mean? does the screen go/stay black or does it revert to the default MS driver with the tray notification?

 

next time it happens try pressing CTRL + Win + Shift + B and give it a second. if it stays black then unplug/replug the display cable from the GPU and then try it. 

 

the rando black screen issue is fairly common with the 3000 series (happened to me a few times) and that's how I get it to come back. never heard of it happening with the 2000 series though. 

Edited February 28, 2023 by The Pook

[maddangerous]

3 hours ago, Supercrumpet said:

 

 

Phoenix V3, so 2080 Ti.

 

I should have mentioned that I did check event viewer and it mentioned the 'ol nvlddmkm, which I interpret to be video drivers. I uninstalled with DDU and installed newest drivers; behavior didn't change at all.

 

ok so, if this started mid-week last week, what happened before this? Any major changes?

 

Windows update?

Driver update?

 

Do you know if windows update is configured to allow updating your drivers automatically?

 

As a long shot, you could do yourself a favor and disable fast startup.. I've seen this fix far, far too many issues.

 

Control Panel -> Power options -> Choose what the power buttons do

Click the link that says "Change settings that are currently unavailable"

Under the "Shutdown settings" area, untick the box that says "Turn on fast startup (Recommended)"

 

Don't believe the text that says restart isn't affected.

 

Fast startup especially doesn't matter for you, because you're on an SSD.

 

Reboot so that disabling it takes effect, and then try DDU and reinstall again.

When you DDU, and reinstall, are you booting into safe mode and installing the driver?

 

3 hours ago, The Pook said:

what does "appears to crash" mean? does the screen go/stay black or does it revert to the default MS driver with the tray notification?

 

next time it happens try pressing Win + Shift + B and give it a second. if it stays black then unplug/replug the display cable from the GPU and then try it. 

 

the rando black screen issue is fairly common with the 3000 series (happened to me a few times) and that's how I get it to come back. never heard of it happening with the 2000 series though. 

 

I was never aware of that issue, thanks for the heads up. I know a few people on 3000 series lol.

[The Pook]

forgot a key, it's Win + Shift + B 

 

47 minutes ago, maddangerous said:

I was never aware of that issue, thanks for the heads up. I know a few people on 3000 series lol.

 

It only seems to hit certain brands/models but afaik there's never been a fix. Here's a thread on Reddit with a few other threads linked in it that all have the issue:

 

 

Edited February 28, 2023 by The Pook

[Supercrumpet]

5 hours ago, The Pook said:

what does "appears to crash" mean? does the screen go/stay black or does it revert to the default MS driver with the tray notification?

 

next time it happens try pressing CTRL + Win + Shift + B and give it a second. if it stays black then unplug/replug the display cable from the GPU and then try it. 

 

the rando black screen issue is fairly common with the 3000 series (happened to me a few times) and that's how I get it to come back. never heard of it happening with the 2000 series though. 

 

Black screen but I still have audio, sometimes the audio will loop after 20 seconds of continuing to play normally and then it'll restart automatically.

 

I'll try Ctrl + Win + Shift + B though. Never heard of that before, interesting to see that function bound to a keyboard shortcut. I'll try that if the issue persists when I'm next on my sim.

 

1 hour ago, maddangerous said:

 

ok so, if this started mid-week last week, what happened before this? Any major changes?

 

Windows update?

Driver update?

 

Do you know if windows update is configured to allow updating your drivers automatically?

 

As a long shot, you could do yourself a favor and disable fast startup.. I've seen this fix far, far too many issues.

 

Control Panel -> Power options -> Choose what the power buttons do

Click the link that says "Change settings that are currently unavailable"

Under the "Shutdown settings" area, untick the box that says "Turn on fast startup (Recommended)"

 

Don't believe the text that says restart isn't affected.

 

Fast startup especially doesn't matter for you, because you're on an SSD.

 

Reboot so that disabling it takes effect, and then try DDU and reinstall again.

When you DDU, and reinstall, are you booting into safe mode and installing the driver?

 

 

I was never aware of that issue, thanks for the heads up. I know a few people on 3000 series lol.

 

I don't think I had any Windows or driver updates around that time. Are Windows update logs or some sort of update history in Event Viewer to double check that? I remember it's a thing but it's been years since I've looked. I don't think I get auto updating drivers, but I'm not 100% sure. My Windows settings aren't super consistent across my PCs.

 

I'll try disabling fast startup right off the bat though, can't hurt. I did see that mentioned once when Googling, but I didn't think it was relevant. Perhaps it is, haha.

[maddangerous]

14 hours ago, Supercrumpet said:

 

Black screen but I still have audio, sometimes the audio will loop after 20 seconds of continuing to play normally and then it'll restart automatically.

 

I'll try Ctrl + Win + Shift + B though. Never heard of that before, interesting to see that function bound to a keyboard shortcut. I'll try that if the issue persists when I'm next on my sim.

 

 

I don't think I had any Windows or driver updates around that time. Are Windows update logs or some sort of update history in Event Viewer to double check that? I remember it's a thing but it's been years since I've looked. I don't think I get auto updating drivers, but I'm not 100% sure. My Windows settings aren't super consistent across my PCs.

 

I'll try disabling fast startup right off the bat though, can't hurt. I did see that mentioned once when Googling, but I didn't think it was relevant. Perhaps it is, haha.

 

hmm ok. I'll look around and see how MS has changed their update stuff. Generally, I think if you check Settings -> Updates & Security -> Windows update, and look for the "View update history" button that would tell us what we want to know.

As far as configuring windows update to not update certain drivers, I'd have to look into that. I set that option on a custom windows install and haven't had to manually disable it for quite some time. Don't recall where it is.

 

RE fast startup... You'd be really surprised at how many things disabling it fixes. I stopped keeping a list 3 years ago.

[GhosX]

windows update strike again

 

sorry for repost , but what i did is ,

- use ddu to delete related graphic driver ,

- install stable driver version

- prevent windows to going mad

 

https://windowsloop.com/stop-automatic-graphics-driver-update-windows-10
https://www.minitool.com/news/disable-automatic-driver-updates-win-10-009.html
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-disable-automatic-driver-updates-windows-10

 

and Windows Update Blocker

https://www.sordum.org/9470/windows-update-blocker-v1-7/

 

 

[Supercrumpet]

Alright, update (but not Windows update) time.

 

I uninstalled two Windows updates from 2/22, roughly the time this started. Not sure if it's the exact day. Uninstalled GPU drivers again with DDU in safe mode, reinstalled, disabled fast startup. Same issues.

 

I triggered it consistently, three times this evening. All three times, the screen froze for a few seconds, then went black with a cursor. All three times, I tried to manually restart video drivers with Ctrl + Win + Shift + B. The first time, it did nothing, and then restarted on its own. The second time, it half-recovered before I could even hit the shortcut. Game window was black, but I could return to Windows and keep using my PC. Game would have to have been restarted, and the "night light" was reset, but otherwise functional. Just a typical video driver crash. Third time was same as the first; shortcut did nothing, then it restarted on its own. Attached is a screenshot of the relevant event viewer error.

 

Do you guys have a suggested video driver version to roll back to?

 

Edited March 3, 2023 by Supercrumpet

[The Pook]

try a Studio driver instead of GRD? don't have any recommendations on a specific one though. 

 

lock it to a wonky curve (something like 1000mhz @ 1.1v) and see if it still happens? if it's just happening at low load/when exiting games then maybe one of non-P0 curves is just not stable anymore. wouldn't fix anything but just to diagnose ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Supercrumpet]

On 03/03/2023 at 17:49, The Pook said:

try a Studio driver instead of GRD? don't have any recommendations on a specific one though. 

 

lock it to a wonky curve (something like 1000mhz @ 1.1v) and see if it still happens? if it's just happening at low load/when exiting games then maybe one of non-P0 curves is just not stable anymore. wouldn't fix anything but just to diagnose ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

I'll try a studio driver tonight and may play with clocks. I'll also try a hardware swap, though I doubt that's the issue if it's running flawlessly when under load.

[Supercrumpet]

I didn't have any time Monday night, but last night I played around with it for a little bit right before going to bed. I tried running everything as it was and got the same issue. I saw that I had some new Windows updates available, and installed those and restarted. That appears to have resolved it. I'll do a few more rally stages today to confirm.

 

If that's the case, to me that clearly points to Windows updates as the original cause here, but it's odd that it wasn't resolved when the problematic updates were uninstalled. Perhaps that's just an idealization of the situation and uninstalling Windows updates doesn't always work cleanly? Never had to uninstall updates before so I'm not sure.

[Supercrumpet]

It indeed seems to have been fixed with the second Windows update. Only thing that's unusual now is it wakes itself up from being asleep about every other day, which it's never done before. Much easier thing to look into though, I haven't toyed with anything yet.

[Supercrumpet]

Woohoo looks like the issue is back! No updates since, so maybe it's not Windows Updates after all. Starting tomorrow I'll be out of town, and I'll be bringing this desktop with me. Hopefully it won't be too frustrating and I'll get plenty of opportunities to diagnose.