infinite loop in geforce driver

[gormster]

Hey everyone,

I have a Geforce 4 MX440 (AGP4X) which recently started screwing up immensely. Occasionally games will freeze for between 5-30 seconds, and sometimes this will be followed by a brief period where the lighting would look more appropriate at a nightclub than rolling pastures.

So far, the only games that are doing this are NoLimits Coasters and Trainz 2006. That being said, I haven't actually tried out anything else with equally intense 3D graphics (I use the word 'intense' loosely here; Trainz may be lush but even the most basic of tracks isn't working in NoLimits), because those games tend to be highly addictive.

Eventually the source of the problem was told to me in a BSOD: The system had stopped because of an infinite loop in a graphics driver (nv4_disp.dll). I've tried updating to the latest version, then rolled back (no improvement on the previous version), then uninstalled the driver, then reinstalled it (twice), then been to Windows Update and done the thing there - it's still doing it. I can't for a second believe that nVidia would release a driver that was so faulty; is there something I'm missing? Has anyone else experienced this?

 

[ski]

Reseat the card making sure it's fully seated, its fan is running(if applicable), its heatsink is decurely attached, and clean off any dust built up on its fan and heatsink.

If no luck, then remove the computer's cover, and run an external fan blowing on the card.
If that works, then the system is overheating when playing intense games. Install a fan on the card(if it does not already have one), and/or additional/more powerful case fans(Lower front of case blowing in, and upper rear or top of case blowing out).

If that does not help, then see if the same problem happens with the card installed in another system under the same conditions. If so, then the card is probably bad.

 

[Engneer]

infinite loop in a graphics driver (nv4_disp.dll)"

Which means something didn't respond, either something stole the interrupt, or it was not completely properly.

This can happen if some other routine writes to the RAM area of video; say it puts a zero where nvidia wants a non-zero, aka, a result descriptor.

Sounds like you've upgraded to some service pack and it has overwritten your video ram area or reallocated it.

The BSOD has a memory dump, you should look at that .dmp file.

99.999% of the time it is the software. GeForce usually has its own 256 meg or greater ram on board and shouldn't be using system RAM at all. Which means if it is using a system RAM area, that's your problem.

 

[Amos43]

It's a classic. You install new drivers on a relatively old computer (Geforce 4 MX you said?), and this creates incompatibilities.

One of the most important things to do is to update the firmware on the card and for your computer (BIOS). It helped for me when a new GPU kept crashing my computer.

Hope this helps.