Please--for the love of all things HOLY, HELP!!!!!

Hubby has been running SL on his laptop (HP Pavilion dv6000 with an 8400m Nvidia graphics card; Vista Home Premium) for the past year without ANY issues. Yesterday, without any prior warning (and without any changes on his part), when he started SL, the screen began to flicker and he received the following message: "Display Driver nvlddmkm stopped responding". It then said something about successfully recovering, but SL did NOT recover and instead crashed. He tried again. Same thing. He contacted HP. The tech there had him first reinstall the drivers. No go. Next, he was instructed to rename the nvlddmkm.sys file in the Sys32 Drivers with the .OLD extension; grab the nvlddmkm.sy_ file and copy it to the drivers folder, then use CMD as an admin to expand the file. Reboot, start Second Life, and an immediate crash with the same message. Back to HP. This time they tell him the file must be corrupt; he'll have to do a system restore. Back two months--no go. Now we're on to a system recovery--a clean slate. Three hours later, he's reinstalled the entire system and SL, boot up SL and SURPRISE--same damn nvlddmkm message. So now he's off to the net to find answers. He's disabled the Aeon; tweaked the Nvidia 3d settings; and again uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers. He has contact Live Chat and submitted a ticket, but they have no answers thus far. He's also tried lowering the in-game preferences with no success. We discussed just going and grabbing a new laptop, but what good will it do to purchase another computer/laptop if this is a common issue, as there seems to be no assurance this won't be the case with a new computer? It's ONLY happening when trying to run SL. Does ANYONE have any suggestions?? Thanks in advance--we're desperate.

Download the latest nVidia drivers for that particular model from http://www.nvidia.com

Be sure that you select either the 32-bit or 64-bit drivers.

Have you tried using snowglobe or emerald? I get that message now and then, it usually does recover. There was an update a while back when that message was appearing quite often but the next release seemed to pretty much solve it.

Try alternate viewers. If that doesn't work, check out other stuff that might place a lot of stress on the graphics card. Sounds as if it might be an issue with the card itself (and yes, they can die from one day to the next).

Does that mean other 3D (opengl) software will run without problem, or just things like your email client, web browser, Office, etc?

If SL is the only 3D proggie that is being used on the computer it would be useful to try something else random and fairly intensive since it might be a hardware issue as well.

Do any other games show similar behavior?

I hate to say it but SL eats video cards for lunch. I mean it burns them out, expecially in laptops with incufficient cooling (which is proably most of them).

Secondly you can turn off some hardware features like "VBO" in SL (if you can get there). Or go into the hardware settings of the nvidia control panel and start shutting off features like transparency AA and some others.

If by any chance he awas in there messing around, there is a particular combination of settings that crashes SL every time. I forget which, but in case he did JUST make changes to the video card settings, put them back and it may go away.

OK, we tried installing the latest drivers. No go. We also tried Emerald (which Live Help attempted to say was the issue when actually it was an attempted solution to the issue). We haven't tried any other high end graphics programs--just email, browser, Word, etc. I guess we would try WOW and see if it happens there. :: sigh :: It's VERY frustrating!! Can a graphics card in a notebook be replaced, or is it pretty much now a throw away if it IS the card??

Airie; I'm so sorry, it's gone. I have the same laptop with the same system you described. I f you search this forum and a couple other (tech) forums on here, you will see my same desperate posts, just like what you just made. I tried everything everyone suggested. I now have a new motherboard. This nvidia message nothing fixes it. You can even go on the nvidia forums and find this issue discussed. His just started; mine went on like that, for a good few months as you can tell if you search my posts in here, with the message and crashing getting worse and worse. Finally it went out in a blaze of glory and geometric lines, brightly colored. By then, it was no longer affecting only SL, but everything. I could not get online at all. My husband is a retired tech from IBM so he has a clue about what's going on; he talked to the techs at HP and sent the damn thing in for a new motherboard. I was still under extended warranty. Had it back now, for 2 months or so, no issues. Eventually, it will happen again. That's my story and be sure to search my posts on this nvidia error message and it's subsequent saga. I posted here with increasing desperation for months.

ETA: This is a dual problem, Microsoft and Nvidia point the finger at each other but neither fixes it.

The message "your display adapter has stopped responding but has recovered" is a common error message that Windows gives when your graphics card or it's driver has failed. If it were just the driver that fouled up or got damaged a driver reinstallation should take care of that.........if that did not fix your problem then it's likely your display adapter (card) has failed or is in the process of failing. The only fix for that is a replacement of the card. On a laptop that is a year or so old that may not be economically feasible........you'll have to make that decision yourself.

Laptops are not the best computer to use for graphically or CPU instensive programs (SL is both) due to the heat produced by the components to render and compute all the data in order to generate your video when in game. If you are going to replace the computer with SL being one of the main programs you are going to use it for then a desktop would be a better choice......if you opt for another laptop then, at least, get a cool pad to place under it while using any program as graphically intnesive as SL (Photoshop, Maya, GIMP, or any video editing programs also are graphically intensive and produce a lot of heat).

Hate being the bearer of bad news, but I think your graphics card has died (or well on it's way to death).

It's not Microsoft's problem nor is it nVidia's problem. You might make a case for it being HP's (or any other computer manufacturer) problem since they design the cooling/heat disapating systems for the computers. But, the real problem is that people are using laptops for programs they were never intended to be use for. You can get laptops that are decent for gaming (they have better cooling built in) but you pay for it in real dollars.

If you are going to insist on using a laptop for SL you need to understand that heat is a big issue with what's going on inside the computer........you have to take measures to get that heat out of the laptop. Cool pads help. A laptop built for sure use helps. But the technology is not quite where it needs to be for laptops that will run as cool as a comparable (actually, much more powerfull) desktop.

Yeah; and I never understood why part of the error message says 'but has recovered' cause it does not recover, you have to quit it and relog, only to have it happen again. as time goes on it gets more frequent til you can't stay inworld at all; then at the end it affects all your internet based programs. I do have SL on a desktop; I just prefer the laptop cause I'm lazy. I have the exact same laptop that Airie's partner has. If mine hadn't been under warranty, I'd have gotten a new one, as Peggy says, only you can make the decision if paying for a new motherboard is worth it to you. Also wanted to mention, that by the time we started talking to HP, we'd already done the system restore, and all that stuff they tell you to try, so our help went quicker because we'd already done all that.

I got those same errors, however mine is the 8500 but I use nvida drivers 8.15.11.8618.
I do not get those errors anymore.

The nvidia website suggests teh 195.62 which I tried and I got those same errors, so I just started going back..... and the results nvida drivers 8.15.11.8618 fixed it.

Also, make sure the old drivers are removed before you install new ones, when windows installs it is possible it is installing the generic drivers and when you load up the correct ones you are creating a mess........

The error message is a Windows error message.........has nothing to do with SL. The graphics "recovered" part means that Windows shut down the offending the program (why you need to quite SL and reload). But if there is damage to either the card or the driver relauching SL or the offending program will now work. And, yes, if the card or adapter is damaged the problem will only get worse til it fails completely.........at the point your display will not show until you use some other means of getting video to your monitor. Onboard graphics (if you have it) will work.

Thanks all. I think we're going to call HP tomorrow, but I know we're out of warranty. I could cry. I guess we'll have to hope business in SL picks up a bit so we can afford a new desktop. ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! In the meantime, he's using MY laptop to access SL, so I'm computerless. Grrrrrr.

Spend $20 USD and get a cool pad for it..........or you may have two computers down.

That's another thing I tried; was $40 actually. Didn't work, was too far gone.

Seriously, before doing anything, if the computer still works fine, maybe try reinstalling windows. It could simply be a corrupt file due to crashing/shutting down incorrectly.

Thanks for all the feedback. I will get a cooling pad for my computer. Mick is online far more than I am, so his laptop took the brunt of the usage. We're going to look at a desktop after the holidays. I did a little browsing, and OMG I can't believe the prices for a desktop or all in one with a decent graphics card!! I think I've been living in the 90's for far too long--time to join those youngens with their long hair and rock and roll.

Thanks again folks!!!

This is really a problem that's getting worse. Sorry, no technical advice - empathy only - but SL has fried 2 laptops in the last 3 months - and I'm down to a back-up to the back-up that is about to blow.

All three of these laptops ran SL fine for hours on end 2 years ago.

The SL viewer has definitely become more GPU hungry and really does eat graphics cards for lunch, but another factor is that laptops are not immune to dust--they're just horribly difficult to clean. At the same time, they're critically dependent on an efficient cooling system for that tiny air space. A dusty cooling fan and heat sink can make a laptop run hotter under the same load: the fan will run faster more of the time, and conditions that it could cool before will become deadly.

I have an hp dv9700 laptop that I fried the graphics section with sl. Can use it for run of the mill stuff, but nothing that requires any graphics.

I don't know what all the fuss is about laptops and SL. I have 10 avatars logged in 24/7 on my cheap end laptop

Only 10?

Yeah...they took them apart, and I was told to keep the cat away from the keyboard...filled with cat hair and coke and cheetos. But my kitty likes to watch SL. They also said that I must use the fan from now on.

Yeah. LL stopped the big parties we had when they changed the rules about bots - spoilsports.