nvlddmkm.sys BSOD (Stuck on W7 Welcome Screen)

Hi all,

First of all I've been a lurker for quite a while reading advice and comments made on the forum and I came across and issue and I knew this was the best place to research my problem and post.

I apologise for the wall of text but I want to give a quick history in case anything here is relevant to trouble shooting.

About 2 Weeks ago my Asus GTX 670 Direct II TOP started to artifact and caused system lock ups. I RMA'd it back to my purchaser who agreed it was faulty and they would return it.
In the mean time I started using a old GTX260 so that I could continue using my machine for work and internet until I got a new 670 sent to me.

This weekend after shutting down the pc normally a few hours before. I came to start it up and I got stuck on the Welcome screen in Windows 7.
I promptly did some hard restarts and kept on getting stuck.

I went into safe mode and checked the temp settings to see if there was an issue at all, this card had been not in use for a good few years as I'd previously had a GTX 460 which I gave to my other half.

Reading topics on this forum lead me to do all these various things;

• Turn of all but MS Services and Drivers on boot
• System restore
• Last known Good Configuration
• MemTest
• Prime 95
• Attempt Repair install (could not do from safemode)

Eventually I got fairly annoyed and decided to reinstall windows after backing up.
Unfortunately I kept getting stuck at the Welcome Screen again.


I decided to do another install as I had not done the partitions I wanted correctly the first time and thought what the hey.
This time I started to get BSOD a few moments after being stuck at windows.
Progress I thought!, maybe I can see what's wrong....nvlddmkm.sys apparently!

At this point I went back into safe mode and started to do a few more of the above trouble shooting again. This time however I tried the last 4 and Beta driver for the card to see if it was a bad driver.This didn't work so I tried a method to rename/remove nvlddmkm.sys from windows/system32/drivers

This didn't work. However I was able to get into windows and then install the normal Nvidia driver, (upon rebooting I would get the same BSOD again but at least I was in) at this point I ran Furmark for about 2/3 hours to see if my graphics card was dead. Annoyingly it ran fine, it got to about 80°C but didn't crash out on me.
At this point I went to bed. All the information gathered using your SF Diag Tool to this point is 'Uggers No1'

When I booted the machine the next day, I went into safe mode straight away and double checked MSConfig - I decided to turn of a few things and let it reboot. Weirdly it booted straight in and started to do a windows update then went to desktop. Concerned something was up still. I ran Furmark with the latest drivers for Nvidia and started to update all my other drivers (I think) to see if I could force a BSOD. But I couldn't get it do to do it. I then ran Prime95 again, after about 1hour it did a BSOD with a new code. I realised the overclock that came with the mobo/cpu/ram combo I bought was still active. So I pushed it back to stock then rebooted and it went straight to desktop. I ran Prime95 again for about 1hr and it didn't crash again. I then rebooted and pushed the overclock back to what it was and ran Prime for 3 hours, with no crash.

Info from the Prime BSOD onwards is 'Uggers No2'

As of today, I've just updated to SP1 and windows is fairly up to date. I am going to run Prime95 again and see if it crashes. At this point I am not sure what to think I'm worried my computer might suddenly fall over again. Or maybe I missed something important that would explain it. Sadly I don't have my replacement graphics card back so I can't just see if this old 260 is dieing.

Anyway sorry for the big wall of text.

If you have any advice or suggestion let me know.

Just adding another minidump.

This one occured after leaving the computer running prime for 3 hours.

Forgot to add as well, I ran driver Verifier and didn't get a bsod happen with it I don't think.