Display Driver Crashing... Wtf?

So I've been having this problem lately where my display driver just decides to crash while playing ffxi. On the minor side, I get the message "the display driver has stopped responding but has recovered", and on the major side, the entire screen gets pixelated out with weird colored boxes and what not, then crashes to black and the computer freezes. It happens the most when I'm playing new content (specifically using fluxes in abyssea) or while dboxing. And for the record, I've had this computer for 2 years now with absolutely no problems whatsoever.

I have found a lot of forums via google with ppl posting the same type of problem with a lot of different machines, but I have yet to find a solution. A friend of mine suggested I overclocking, but Im not sure i'm computer savy enough to do something like that. I know its not a heating issue because since its started happening, I've had the fans cleaned twice and bought an external fan that i use whenever the computer is turned on.

Any help or feedback would be greatly appreciated.
I have an Alienware laptop m15x with vista home premium/ Intel core2 duo CPU T9500 @2.60GHz/ 4.00 GP RAM/ ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870.

Have you tried updating the drivers?

You might also need to roll back the drivers if updating doesn't help.

I have exactly this problem with an entirely different setup :D
I was just training 30 Tonberries and it happened and killed me q.q My screen goes black, comes back, FFXI x2 has crashed. It has happened fairly frequently for a while.

Win 7 professional, Intel Core i5 @2.4GHz, 6GB RAM, NVidia Geforce 310M

When was the last time you opened your PC, and gave it a nice dust off with those compressed cans? This bold part to me means your video card may be overheating. Typical from old video cards, how new is it? Is it onboard video? Do you have a Dell or HP? lol but seriously, sometimes its not a bad idea to reapply the adhesive on the gpu and maybe even getting those heatsink stickies on the RAM of your video card.

I had a similar problem with my Radeon HD3850 and my Geforce GT 240.

Fixed the problem on my Geforce GT by using spare ramsinks. Seeing weird shapes/colors is usually a ram problem.

Fixed the problem on my Radeon HD3850 by replacing it. That card was unstable as *** due to me running it with a completely passive heatsink for many years and my laziness to not use the ramsinks. Couple that with 24/7 operation and a lot of gaming...

In your case, I'd probably clean out the laptop and hope no permanent damage has happened! And also upgrade/downgrade drivers as you see fit.

@Dannyl He's using a Dell, hence Alienware etc. 2years old.

-Yes I've tried cleaning it out, with both the compressed air myself, and cleaned professionally.
-Yes I've tried updating the driver software.

@Yarly, are you suggesting the best thing to do is replace the graphics card? Like i said in OP, i'm really not a computer person beyond being able to turn them on and operate windows. Unfortunately you'll have to explain things like i'm a 3 year old. I have been running this computer a lot since i got it, nearly 24/7 for 2 years either gaming or afk. Although I dont think its a heat problem anymore, I'm concerned about the possibility there was some damage done that became the cause of this. Is this type of thing possible?

P.S. thank you for the replies.

Sounds like your video card is artifacting, which is usually a very good sign your card is on it's way out. I've never had a card that started artifacting last more than a couple of months before it degraded to a point that playing games was impossible.. They'd end up crashing about every 10-30 minutes or so.

Hope its ok to write in this old thread here.

I have the same problem like the OP. ffxi decides to randomly crash, especally in abyssea at confluxes or when someone casts a spell. the entire screen freezes, then gets dark and then it gets recovered and i get the "the display driver has stopped responding but has recovered" message.

I think its a direct x problem because the error report says something like Fault Module: d3d8.dll

Tried to update display driver, direct x etc. but it didnt fix it.
Also googled the problem, seems like a lot of ppl having the problem but haven't found a fix so far.

Funny thing is new games run fine on my rig.

Did you fix the problem OP?

This is going to sound odd, but I would suggest trying to downgrade to a specific set of drivers to fix your problem. Some driver sets are better able to run ffxi than others.

What you can also do since this is a direct x issue, is try to uninstall direct X, and then do a clean install of direct X. If that doesn't solve the issue, check this site out.HERE!

Post some more specs on your PC mistral.
CPU
RAM amount
GPU specifications
display driver version #

The problem is you cannot uninstall direct x.

My rig:
AMD Phenom II X4 940
EVGA GeForce GTX 285 FTW
Corsair XMS2 4094MB DDR2 RAM
Nvidia driver: 301.42

Certain display drivers crash with the glowing features of FF (confluxes, teleport points); a downgrade in graphic drivers is required 90% of the time

I have a similar problem also. I also receive "the display driver has stopped responding but has recovered" message.

I have:
AMD FX-8120 Eight-Core Processor, 3100 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
Radeon HD7700 (driver: 8.982.0.0)
Corsair 16gb RAM
Antec EA-750 PSU

I tried uninstalling everything AMD and ATI of the computer and and reinstalling the newest Catalyst suite. I tried it first under default clock settings 1150Mhz and it kept on happening.

I underclocked to 1000Mhz and an increased fan speed (from 20% to 40%), and it worked for most of the day. Then I got the AMD display driver error again. Now it doesn't just black screen and crash POL, it now freezes with a white screen with bars.

Any help is most appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Is it a new system build or has it been running for a while? Are you 2 boxing on it when these crashes occur?

My buddy Bochief had this issue and could not resolve it period. He's smart and resourceful and good with computers but gave up and purchased a new system after dealing with this for longer than he is willing to admit.

One thing, though. I don't believe he ever wiped his HD and reformatted as I suggested but I suspect there was a logical explanation for this on his part.

I'm willing to bet its a windows driver software incompatibility that originates with the motherboard chipsets themselves and their connection to the video cards.

The video cards themselves I'm hearing are fine. It's happening on AMD and Nvidia both and it's happening on AMD as well as Intel systems, assuming all of these "driver stopped responding" errors related to ffxi are the same error, which obviously, they may not be. That kinda points at windows borking something somewhere down the line, assuming your computer isn't new. It may be something with .NET framework too, cus God knows we use that stuff a lot these days. That would help explain why the issue is also popping up in both win 7 and XP.

Trini, I suspect your card does not need to be underclocked, and possibly the card does not like being underclocked and is causing further issues. I think, unfortunately, you should probably think about backing up your files and reformatting your HD and starting fresh with win 7. I think if the crashes continue after format and all of the updates to win 7 and correct system drivers, then u will need to change out your motherboard and/or video card/psu.

Just to be clear, though. I am running a system very similar to yours. I'm using the same video drivers and a 960t Zosma phenom II/HD 6850/cheapo ASrock board, but the build is less than a year old and carefully updated. Never personally seen this issue *knock on wood*

It is a new system. My mobo is a GA-990FXA-UD3.


No, the error happens randomly, sometimes I'm in game for 2min, last night - was in game for at least 5 hours. Sometimes it goes out of game with just firefox and vent (or MSN) up.

Go to youtube load a video, right click it go to settings. In there disable hardware accelerater, it's fixed mines. Not sure what the problem is though seems the graphic card just goes bad. Hope it helps others have gotten solutions by disabling aero theme.

Tired, but did not help. Thank you though for the suggestion.

Trying a few things (double-checking everything is updated, maybe an older Catalyst Display Driver - like 12.2) before starting with a fresh win7.

There is a new Catalyst driver that came out on 8/15. I had that issue over the weekend getting the blue screen about video driver not responding. I updated with the new driver and so far no problems. Also check and see if you have the latest Vbios for your graphics card. I had to update my Vbios the last time to use the new Catalyst update.

Generally if it's not a hardware issue this will fix it. I have learned over the years it's handy to have 2-4 separate HDDs I have 3 myself, one for windows OS, one for movies/music/pictures and the final one for games. Comes in handy when you can't seem to fix something and need to start fresh, that way you don't really lose anything and you don't have to sit there waiting for 9 or so hours for FFXI to update.

I started over with a clean install of Win7 on a ssd and re-installed drivers, same error pops up on FFXI, FFXIV benchmark and 3Dmark 11 benchmark. Contacted Diamond multimedia about the problem, hopefully get a replacement 7770PE51GDD. Cut the UPC code off box for the rebate, so I doubt the store (Fry's) will take it back.

The screen dims as windows boots up and during loading in FFXI.

Found out it was my graphics card. Swapped in a GT520 (<- :( @ this GPU) a neighbor had left over...and everything works. Now just have to wait on Diamond to respond.

*UPDATE*
got the 7770 back. They reflashed it and now it's fine :)

I am having this same problem Display driver has crashed and recovered buy my PC is a Brand new Alienware X51 with

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660
Windows 7 Home Premium Edition
16 Gigs Ram

I have done full clean installs of the drivers and Win 7 and just got the Nvidia card completely replaced and I still crash with this 660. I don't know what to do please help!

Are you sure you're putting enough power to the card? Try another card slot.

There was a thread recently about this. I think you had to turn off shadows to get it working.

Known issue with Nvidia 6XX series cards, turn off your shadows and weather effects and it should be fine. Going to have to wait for a good driver update for it to properly get resolved.

o.o really just shadows and weather effects? cause I really wanna play FFXI and having a computer that seems to breeze through all my other games without issue but won't play my favorite was making me rather sad ; ;.

And yes I did make sure it had enough power and checked it for over heating. I am going to right now go turn off shadows and weather then see if star diver in abyssea crashes me (thats been my test so far with 100% crash rate)

Dont forget to report the issue to Nvidia tech support, if they don't know the issue they can't fix it.

It worked >//< thank you so much for the answer I was gonna return my entire computer! I had googled so much but didn't search forums and now I wish I did. Thanks so much ^ ^ I even excited to do the 600 bird kills now :P

and I will report the issue though i'm sure others have before me