Crashing/Semicrashing on laptop (Lenovo Y580)

[Lionera]

Ok so 2 days ago, I discovered that the reason I got crappy FPS was cause my laptop was using the INTEL gpu, not the NVIDIA one. Got a relative to fix it and voila, got to enjoy the smoothest graphics and gameplay((high) laptop, 60 fps) for about 4 hours that day. Next day was just a nightmare. I open my laptop and log into the game, and crash about 15 seconds into logging in. After a hard shutdown, it seems I got the caution sign again on the device manager under my nvidia gpu(original cause of why my laptop was using the intel gpu, as I never bothered before to understand and check device manager) along with the "you are not currently using a display attached to an nvidia gpu" thing. A restart fixed it, but the crashes were still there. Was using the latest Lenovo windows 7 drivers but still crashed. I hoped that restarts would fix it as I couldnt believe just 1 day after playing hours of excellent FFXIV that it would be my last. So then came the crashing with the pink squares littering the screen(was told that it was a sign that my gpu was fried/dead, unsure about this tho). Then I remembered the geforce r331 game ready driver, so I tried that one and also remembered that I never tried playing windowed mode too(yeah was grasping at straws). So I did both and got a sort of partial fix, result was getting a mini crash every 30 seconds for about 3 seconds and I'd get "Display driver NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver version 331.82 has stopped responding and has successfully recovered", but game would resume right after. Sorry for the incredibly long back story but yeah that's pretty much it. Would appreciate any help or advice you guys got, thanks in advance

[RaineMagus]

Honestly I'd suggest giving a driver a try from the R310 branch, if you've not already. My Sager NP8170 (Geforce 580m) has similar issues in that anything past 312.69 causes instability in FFXIV.


Ironically, performance is also pretty much the same between R310 and R331_00 (excluding SLI ... there's actually some major SLI improvements [not just the profile] ).



-You might also have luck just increasing the TDR (timeout display recovery) delay, like so. Wouldn't surprise me if that works, as the GPU / drivers being overly busy and simply being misdetected is actually pretty common for alot of FPS's (eg, BFBC2). The default timeout in Windows Vista, 7, 8 is only 2 seconds.

============================================================
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers]
"TdrDelay"=dword:0000000a
"TdrDdiDelay"=dword:0000000a
============================================================

Upping the TDR delay does not work for my notebook, sadly. R310 being the only solution.

[Lionera]

I didn't know we could use older versions, I thought they phased out when newer ones are released. Sorry not really a tech savvy person unfortunately. How do I increase the TDR tho? Thanks btw for the advices least now I have a couple more things to work on and try

[RaineMagus]

I didn't know we could use older versions, I thought they phased out when newer ones are released. Sorry not really a tech savvy person unfortunately. How do I increase the TDR tho? Thanks btw for the advices least now I have a couple more things to work on and try

You've alot of options far as getting 'older' video drivers. To name a few archives:

NVidia's archive: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us (back to 310.90 for mobile)
Guru3d's archive: http://www.guru3d.com/files_categori...vista_|_7.html (every release ever made)
laptopvideo2go's archive: http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/ (every release ever made)

--Sometimes you may find that a driver (not straight from the manufacturer of the laptop) doesn't support your laptop's "specific" hardware ID (a few manufacturers flash a custom vbios that alters the hardware-ID reported to the OS). In these cases the drivers straight from NVidia "still" work ... just you may need to manually add said ID to the respective driver's inf file manually. [*This part probably won't be necessary, yet I'm mentioning it incase you run into issues getting older drivers on there*]

Guru3d forum tutorial on that aspect: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=377158



Also note that you can only rollback drivers so far of course (to the point that NVidia first added support for your hardware). If you have a card like the one mentioned in my Sager though, you'll have no issues rolling back to R310, or even R306 / 304 if you wanted to for the sake of experimentation.

--Newer does not necessarily mean better, as the best driver is imo the driver that runs stable for YOUR specific setup and games. Newer drivers fix issues with newer titles... Yet, as the saying goes "If it ain't broken, don't fix it".. Sometimes changes to get new titles working or fixes for issues in newer games, cause new bugs or the resurfacing of issues in others.



Far as raising the TDR delay, the above section of text between the ============== dividers is essentially a registry file that raises the timeout to 10s. You can copy and paste the text between the lines in to any text editor, such as Notepad, and save that as "TDR.reg". Then right click on TDR.reg and select to merge / import the file.

Alternatively, you can use 'regedit' to navigate to the listed key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers], and modify the TdrDelay value by hand. Just type "regedit" into the Windows start button (or screen) search feature, to find the tool. (It's included with all copies of Windows)

*You'll need to restart Windows for the change to take effect.


If you have a Windows 8 machine, the new bootloader is a "pain in the butt" to get to disabling driver signature enforcement (for the initial installation of a driver where you've edited the inf). A trick to make this alot easier is to restore the Windows 7 / classic bootloader behavior (which doesn't require multiple reboots for the F8 choice to be made).

Just open an administrative command prompt, and enter in:
bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy legacy


On the next reboot, the F8 menu will be the classic.

[Lionera]

Going to try the older drivers, I've got a gtx 660m will I be able to try older drivers or will I have issues? I'm going to try this first then if it doesn't work I'll try the TDR delay. Where do I merge and import the file? Not really experienced in this kind of modding stuff, thanks again for the follow up

[RaineMagus]

Going to try the older drivers, I've got a gtx 660m will I be able to try older drivers or will I have issues? I'm going to try this first then if it doesn't work I'll try the TDR delay. Where do I merge and import the file? Not really experienced in this kind of modding stuff, thanks again for the follow up

--A 660m should be able to use drivers from R310. When in doubt you can check the supported hardware sections as listed on laptopvideo2go's forums (from the inf's), for each driver release before downloading them.

Eg, you'd look for something like this in the inf:

[DEV_0FD4&SUBSYS_37001558] NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M
[DEV_0FD4&SUBSYS_51051558] NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M
[DEV_0FD4&SUBSYS_71021558] NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M

*Also remember that if your hardware isn't contained in the inf and you really want to use that driver, you probably "can" with some hand editing and disabling driver signature enforcement (if Windows 8).


--The merge / import option is in the right-click context menu when clicking on a .reg file. Basically just navigate to where you stored the file with Windows Explorer, then right click on it. ("merge" should be the first menu entry, and in bold)

[Furlamseere]

It seems that there have not been any further posts about this concern being an ongoing issue. Because of this, we are considering it to be resolved. If this does continue to be a concern, please create another thread to further discuss resolutions or contact the Support Center at support.na.square-enix.com for assistance.