Vortex i7 - dxgkrnl.sys BSOD

[gattoandalou]

Hi there,

I bought a laptop from PCSpecialist almost a year ago.
It never had any problems and has always been perfect (so kudos to everyone).
Until today: I got random graphic glitches (nothing major) that culminated with a system freeze. Then after restarting it, the laptop booted with some strange glitches going on screen and when I tried to log on Windows7 (glitches were still there, for example the display of the login bar was weird and faulty) the desktop would load full of graphic glitches and then everything would crash after something like 2-3 minutes displaying a BSOD.

This is a pretty bad time to have a BSOD (Uni hand-ins are kicking in and not having a functional laptop is kind of unnerving 'cause I can't work!).

Here are my specs:

Intel® Core™i7 Mobile Processor i7-620M (2.66GHz) 4MB Cache
8GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 4GB)
nVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 460M - 1.5GB GDDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
250GB SERIAL ATA II 2.5" HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (5,400rpm)

and here is the crash dump analysis with WhoCrashed:

On Mon 11/14/2011 1:49:04 PM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\111411-28579-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: dxgkrnl.sys (dxgkrnl+0x5D000)
Bugcheck code: 0x116 (0xFFFFFA8006F8F4E0, 0xFFFFF88004B30904, 0x0, 0x2)
Error: VIDEO_TDR_ERROR
file path: C:\Windows\system32\drivers\dxgkrnl.sys
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: DirectX Graphics Kernel
Bug check description: This indicates that an attempt to reset the display driver and recover from a timeout failed.
The crash took place in a standard Microsoft module. Your system configuration may be incorrect. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver on your system which cannot be identified at this time.
Google query: dxgkrnl.sys Microsoft Corporation VIDEO_TDR_ERROR

On Mon 11/14/2011 1:49:04 PM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\memory.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: dxgkrnl.sys (dxgkrnl!TdrResetFromTimeout+0x214)
Bugcheck code: 0x116 (0xFFFFFA8006F8F4E0, 0xFFFFF88004B30904, 0x0, 0x2)
Error: VIDEO_TDR_ERROR
file path: C:\Windows\system32\drivers\dxgkrnl.sys
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: DirectX Graphics Kernel
Bug check description: This indicates that an attempt to reset the display driver and recover from a timeout failed.
The crash took place in a standard Microsoft module. Your system configuration may be incorrect. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver on your system which cannot be identified at this time.
Google query: dxgkrnl.sys Microsoft Corporation VIDEO_TDR_ERROR

I hope this all makes sense. I don't think it's an hardware problem or anything really bad, but I wanted to have an opinion before starting to do anything.
I already sent an e-mail to the Enquiries but I posted here too, 'cause on forum board you generally get quicker answers.

Thank you for your time!

[AndyL]

Firstly back up any inportant data - especially those uni files!

Have you updated the Graphics Card Drive recently? if your not sure how to check then hit the windows key and type "DxDiag" and push enter (if a message comes up about checking if drivers are digitally signed then click yes) then click on the "display" tab and check the drivers date (on the right hand side of the page). If you have updated recently then I suggest trying different drivers.

[vanthus]

Looks like a driver problem as AndyL suggests,
I would try reinstalling or updating the graphics card driver from manufacturers website,
It could also be a problem with another driver,so same thing applies,
main suspect being the network driver.

[gattoandalou]

Hi ya, thanks for the fast responses!

So I updated my NVidia drivers (with these http://uk.geforce.com/drivers/results/39092 ) but as soon as I restarted the system after the installation I got a BSOD without even loading the Windows 7 account log in screen, and it's systematic (the BSOD is the same as the one in the first post).
I should have said that I'm running Windows 7 in Safe Mode (with networking option) because I can't do otherwise. Sorry that I missed out on that one.
I tried to download the Network Drivers but I can't install them while in Safe Mode.
And DxDiag doesn't seem to work while on Safe Mode too (probably because the graphics card is not running).
So it might be better to just use the system restore at this point, no?

UPDATE: System Restore didn't change anything. :(

Thanks again for helping me out! :)

[vanthus]

Try this,in device manager in safe mode disable or uninstall display adaptor,
try disable first,then see if you can boot normally,
if so uninstall driver then try installing again.

[gattoandalou]

I disabled the NVidia driver and now it boots no prob (albeit slowly) into my session. Great. Now I'll uninstall it because it's obviously faulty but I dunno which version I should install back. The same one or the newest one?

EDIT: Should I use DriverSweeper for the disinstallation of the driver? I read people recommending this.

Thanks again! :D

[vanthus]

Yes I would use driver sweeper.
As for installing driver,first have a look in your PCS customer section then click on download drivers to see if there is one available.
If not try any driver disks supplied with the laptop.
Failing that,Installing from nvidia website seems to be a hit or a miss with some laptops,
so I would give PCS a phone to see if they can advise.

[gattoandalou]

On the customer section the only available drivers were the Wireless ones. And I didn't have any driver disks when I received my laptop (true story!).
Instead I still had the installer of the lastest NVidia driver so I went for it. And failed. So now I'm gonna call PCS tomorrow and hopefully they'll sort it out.

Thanks again! :D