Nvidia GeForce Graphics Card Blue Screen of Death crash

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For the last couple of months, I get sudden crashes while watching a video. It usually happens when I am skipping parts in a video - then my PC gets stuck, and after few seconds I get this popup message: 

The following plugin has stopped working: Shockwave Flash

or something along those lines. Then I can choose to kill it or wait - but whatever I click causes my PC to crash and show the blue screen of death.

My video card is Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT, and my driver version is 6.14.12.7061.

I've analyzed the cause for the frequent blue screen crashes using WhoCrashed 3.2, and it says that the problem was caused by the nv4_disp.dll file:

crash dump file: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini061012-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: nv4_disp.dll (nv4_disp+0x2446BE) 
Bugcheck code: 0x1000008E (0xFFFFFFFFE0000001, 0xFFFFFFFFB8440925, 0xFFFFFFFFB0B91880, 0x0)
Error: KERNEL_MODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED_M
file path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\nv4_disp.dll
product: NVIDIA Compatible Windows 2000 Display driver, Version 270.61 
company: NVIDIA Corporation
description: NVIDIA Compatible Windows 2000 Display driver, Version 270.61 
Bug check description: This indicates that a kernel-mode program generated an exception which the error handler did not catch.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem. 
A third party driver was identified as the probable root cause of this system error. It is suggested you look for an update for the following driver: nv4_disp.dll (NVIDIA Compatible Windows 2000 Display driver, Version 270.61 , NVIDIA Corporation).

I have tried to update the driver several times, but this problem doesn't go away.

I couldn't find any solution to this problem, and even though in the past I didn't have this issue, I couldn't find a good stable driver version that didn't have this problem (I've tried many old & new versions).

graphics-card
crash
flash
bsod
nvidia-geforce
asked on Super User Jun 17, 2012 by amiregelz • edited Nov 18, 2012 by amiregelz

2 Answers

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After some googling I found this thread of people having the same problem. There, disabling hardware acceleration in Flash seems to help.

The other suggestion was to downgrade the driver, as it seems to be a conflict between newer Nvidia drivers and Flash Player.

You could at least ease some symptoms by enabling HTML5 video on the sites that support it (e.g. YouTube, Dailymotion). Or you could use something like FlashBlock to at least remind you before you load any Flash content.

answered on Super User Jun 17, 2012 by lime • edited Dec 1, 2012 by amiregelz
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My GTX 470 has been similarly unstable for a while. I was suspecting bad memory, but I came across this post on Nvidia forums suggesting a mild overvolt to make the card more stable. I know the bug description says it's most likely not a hardware problem, but I'm putting my 2 cents here since it might at least help others.

In short, I used MSI Afterburner to increase the Core Voltage ~0.13mV above default, and my card has been much more stable since.

Your mileage may vary. Remember that more voltage likely means more heat and careless fiddling around may very well damage the card further. I used it as a last resort since my problem was bad enough that I would have had to ditch the card otherwise.

answered on Super User Jun 17, 2012 by lime • edited Jun 17, 2012 by lime

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