Windows 7: Nvidia windows kernel mode driver version 301.42 stopped responding

Good evening all. I am hoping to find some help for my question below. I have searched the forums here for similar issues but nothing I have tried thus far has worked.

I get a black screen for about 5 seconds and then the screen recovers. Sometimes it happens 3-4 times a game (League of Legends, Skyrim) and sometimes not at all. During that time, if I alt tab, I can see this message once the screen recovers, "nvidia windows kernel mode driver version 301.42 stopped responding and has recovered."



I have a Geforce GTX 260 with Nvidia 301.42 drivers and Windows 7 64bit (full specs are in my details). My motherboard is running updated drivers. I have tried both the 294 and 285 drivers and still have the issue with both. My GPU temp is 64C which doesn't seem to be too hot (but maybe?)

So far, I've read through a lot of forum posts and tried numerous different things, including; low video settings, disabling all visual upgrades from Windows 7, selecting the video card in 3D settings in Nvidia control panel, and numerous other things.

Please someone help!

Hello and welcome to the forums Bruntz!

64 C at load is normal for that graphics card.

Is your GTX 260 overclocked? Set it to default clocks and try again.

Try using these latest beta drivers from NVIDIA for your graphics card:-

GeForce 304.79 Beta 64-bit download from Guru3D.com

No overclocking. I will try the beta drivers tonight when I get home from work. Currently running memtest also. Do I need to only have a single stick of RAM in at a time for memtest?

Yes that is recommended so that you can be sure that the ram stick you're testing is the one that is working/not working.

I ran memtest - no errors; also installed the beta drivers and restarted but am still getting a black screen for 5 seconds or so during games.

Any other suggestions?

Have you tried stress testing your card with FurMark?

FurMark: VGA Stress Test, Graphics Card and GPU Stability Test, Burn-in Test, OpenGL Benchmark and GPU Temperature | oZone3D.Net

Try it, and report back if the same black screen issue occurs.

Burn test complete, I wasn't here for the whole time it was running, do I need to be?

1360 score. 13334 Frames, 14 FPS, 91C.

Gonna boot up a game now and see if any crashes occur.

Any idea if this is a graphics card issue or something more?

Still happening.

What's next?

Hmmm... this may be more that a simple graphics card issue.

For the next step, can you perform a Clean Boot by:-

1) Going to the System Configuration Utility (Start|type in msconfig|enter)

2) On the General Tab, click on the Selective startup entry, untick "Load startup items", hit Apply and OK

3) Reboot

Try running your game again. If the problems occur, repeat steps 1 - 2 but before exiting the utility, go to the Services tab, tick "Hide all Microsoft services", click on Disable All, then hit Apply and OK. Reboot.

Try the game(s) again, and report back. Thanks for your patience.

I am also facing same issues.

Screen goes blank randomly for few seconds and comes back again. At times it does this multiple times in series and the gets stable for hours.
* Using nVidia 260 GTX with 301.42 drivers.
* Also tried 280.26 drivers but still same issue.
* My card is not at all Overclocked
* Tried system restore also, but no joy.
* checked the cable was properly plugged in at both ends.
* Even switched the DVI port on the graphic card end still no joy.
* Thought i noticed the system is stable when run in safe mode. and screen does not
goes blank at all.

As suggested in previous post i will sure try rebooting it in clean state. once i get home.

Any further help will be appreciated.