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Nvlddmkm.sys BSOD / Game freezes
Hopefully someone can shed some light on what has been happening to my laptop in the last couple of months.
My laptop is a three years old Acer Aspire 5750G (specifications can be found in my profile).
I've been getting the much dreaded "nvlddmkm.sys" BSOD problem, seemingly randomly, BUT ONLY when playing games, that use my Geforce GT540M (so it doesn't happen when browsing, watching films, etc.). If I play games, which use my Intel HD3000, I NEVER have any problems.
The problem is I can't put my finger on when these BSODs happen. I sometimes managed to play a full day without ANY BSODs, only to get a lot of BSODs after that day. It really happens randomly.
First I thought it is something to do with my processor and GPU heating up, so I cleaned the dust out, changed the thermal grease (Noctua NT-H1), got a cooling pad, but it didn't seem to help. Sometimes I get these BSODs, when even just starting a game up, so it can't be a heating problem.
So I read hundreds of threads about "nvlddmkm.sys" issues and I tried out a "fix" that a lot of people were suggesting, mainly adding TdrLevel and TdrDelay to the registry.
In my case it only changed one thing:
1. I play a game which uses my Geforce GT540M (for example Counter Strike: Global Offensive, but it happens with every other game that uses my Geforce)
2. After a while (or even instantly after starting to play), the game freezes (no BSOD screen).
3. With Ctrl+Alt+Delete I can get back to the Desktop and stop CS:GO through Task Manager, BUT csgo.exe remains in Task Manager and cannot be stopped with anything.
4. So I choose to shutdown my laptop through Start menu and it goes fine until the "Shutting down" logo, after that I get a black screen and my laptop just doesn't shut down. This only happens, if I try to shut it down after a game freeze.
It looks like without the TdrLevel and TdrDelay fixes, I get BSODs, using them my games freeze and my laptop can't be shut down properly.
What I tried (but nvlddmkm.sys BSOD / game freezes happen):
-Tried various OS: Win7/8/8.1
-Tried various Nvidia drivers: (from 314.22 to the latest ones, always doing a clean install and using DDU)
-Tried registry fixes (mentioned above)
-Cleaned the fans, changed thermal paste, used cooling pad
-Both HDDs are 100/100 according to HDSentinel
So I'm at a loss here. I'll be running memtest on my RAM, just to be sure and will post back today about the results (it's 1:19AM here), because I really can't think of anything else. I attached everything the SF Diagnostic Tool could gather.
Thank you in advance! If you need any other information or tests to run, please ask, I'll do it, because this is driving me crazy.
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