If for some reason your display drivers is crashing and you are getting the dreaded error message:”Display driver stopped responding and has recovered” then welcome to the club as this is a fairly common issue, especially when you are running an independent graphics or video card. It can be quite confusing when you get this error and it seems to pop up at the most inconvenient times such as when you are watching a movie or playing a game, in my experience it usually happens right around when you are performing a graphically intensive task.
What does the display driver stopped responding and has recovered error mean?
The error itself is straight forward and as stated the display or graphics drivers has for some reason encountered an error and as has recovered. Sometimes this happens very quickly or you may encounter a short period where your display goes dark and you have no signal on-screen and then the display reappears with the message popping up in the system tray at the bottom right. It may also result in a white solid screen followed by the message ominous message: display driver stopped responding and has recovered.
What devices will this occur on?
This is an error that’s common in Windows-based PC’s and can affect any version of windows including: Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 or any other version of windows. This is especially so if you are running an independent Video or Graphics card.
How to fix this Error?
Chances are if you are seeing this error for the first time or a few times already it will actually get worse and more frequent if the underlining cause is not found and corrected. There is no easy way to pin-point the error but from experience I have found that one of the following is usually the culprit:
Video Card
1. Most common cause is that you have recently overclocked your GPU or Graphics card and while you may think it stable at times error will appear a few hours after the system is on or during an intensive graphics session such as gaming. I had a similar issue where I could grantee that about six or so hours after my computer was on my graphics driver would crash on cue if my system was not powered off. The solution in such a case was simple:
- Restore your graphics card to stock settings by removing the overclock settings.
- If you did not overclock check your clock speeds if they are at normal reference levels as indicated on your manufacturer’s website. You can use a program such as MSI after burner to check reference default stats or set them to what they should be.Your specific card should have its own tuning software so feel free to use that if you don’t like MSI After burner.
2. Faulty drivers may be to blamed, if you are not accustomed to updating to the latest drivers then you should as they often contain stability improvements for you to get the most out of your Video card. I suggest that you download the latest version from the manufacturers website or in some cases it could be a new drivers that’s the problem in which case update to an older more stable version and be ware of BETA drivers as they might be unstable with bugs that could cause such issues.
3. A recent program you installed or drivers may be conflicting with your display drivers so consider carefully your last set of installs and try to track down the program that causing the crash and uninstall it.
4. Finally if all else fails you should consider the next most popular cause of this issue and that is that your Graphics card is overheating and causing a malfunction, in this case you will need to change the thermal compound on your graphics cards chip, you can use MSI Afterburner to monitor temps. I have had this happen several times to me and what I normally do is to use Arctic Silver 5 to change the default compound on my chip, the normal stuff wears out quite quickly and can cause all sorts of problems for a Gaming PC or work center that’s used allot.
5. My final suggestion is that you ask yourself how old your Video card is? Why: basically an old graphics card can develop all sorts of issues and result in frequent crashes and on-screen artifacts. In this case its time you upgraded to a new Graphics card or if you are using on board graphics its time you look for a new solution as your hardware is most likely dying.
You got to love when things work as they should but every now and again these little things tend to happen that throws us off, if you’re experiencing the above error were your display driver stop responding and has recovered do not worry patience is the key in fixing such problems once and for all. If you cannot tackle the issue alone leave a comment and surly I will lend a helping hand to you in fixing this error.
I had my old 8800 gt that acted like this. I tried several operating systems, both 32 and 64, i tried all sorts of drivers, old,new,beta , i tried downclocking my card as it was a factory oc model, i even baked it in the oven killing it for good the 1st time but succesfully recovering it after baking it again. The vcard still had this “driver stopped responding” error. My only solution at that time was to replace it with a different card. Haven’t seen that error anymore since then, but i also switched side as that was the last nvidia card to run in any of my pcs. Since then i had the 4650, 7750 and 7850 and none of them crashed, not even once. This goes to those people that accuse amd of having bugged drivers or bad hardware.
Thanks for sharing your experience, I have also heard of the baking trick that works to reflow the solder in the PCB of the card that works by mending gaps or broken path ways that occur when cards become old. That’s only in cases with old cards though and as a last ditch effort when you have nothing to loose. I personally would try upping the voltage a bit or cleaning the card and replacing the thermal compound over that method or using a program like MSI after burner to up the fan speed to help with cooling.