Vista - BSOD caused by Nvidia Drivers?

Hi i have Vista Home Premium x64 and i am getting BSOD's at random. sometimes on youtube and most prominently during game play.


I went into msconfig -> Services, Disabled the MS services and saw only 3 there. 2 of them are stopped. and the only one running was Nvidia Display Driver Service.

And i am assuming that it is the one causing my BSOD's?

Please help me on this one

Hi, almightynugget, and welcome to the forums.

Not sure how long you have been using Windows, but that service could very well indeed be the cause of your problems. So could about 100,0000 other things on your computer. Not sure really why you think a service is causing your problems. I am not trying to be snotty, but your assumption is way off base until you either provide us with more information as to *why* you think this is the cause, or else explain why you suspect a service in the first place.

Also, if you have tweaked services because you think you're getting a performance gain, untweak them and see if the problem disappears...and I ma *dead* serious about that - tweaking Vista services is a bad bad idea unless you are 100% positive that the services you have tweaked are not dependent upon / being depended upon by something else.

To help trouble shoot, first of all, we need your hardware specs, and also the driver version you are using for your video card.

Yep i took a photo of my bluescreen through my phone. it says ...... ndis.sys - Address FFFFF980008..... pretty sure that is nvidia display driver. ummm fyi i never tweaked any of my vista services. i tried once and screwed up my pc had to redo the whole thing again. learnt my lesson lol.

but just want a conformation that my assumption of ndis.sys is from nvidia?

NDIS = Network Driver Interface Specification

so i suggest re-installing your network driver or trying a windows repair

I did what you had asked me to and it didnt work im sorry to say. But thank you. i posted on another site and he confirmed that it was to do with my graphics card?

so im going to address my graphics card problem and see if it does anything. Thank you for all your help. If you guys have any other suggestions id greatly appreciate it.

Thanks again

If you suspect a video card issue, try loading a different version driver. Did you just recently upgrade your graphics drivers? If so do a roll back to the earlier version or install a slightly older version and see if that helps.

As for nVidia display driver service.... copied and pasted from another site.

Nvidia Display Driver Service - This service generally doesn't have an essential function. In my experience, most people can safely disable it and not run into any difficulties or reduced functionality whatsoever. In fact some users note that disabling this service improves Windows startup and shutdown times and general performance. However, some people report potential issues with temperature monitoring on their graphics cards if this service is disabled. In general if you feel you are experiencing any other strange behavior due to the disabling of this service, set it back to Automatic and restart it. Note: In Vista, the Nvidia Display Driver Service may be a startup item (as opposed to an actual service) called NvSvc in some versions of the Forceware drivers, but the same description applies.

Sorry, but NDIS is *not* your graphics card - it is your *network* card.

However, it may be something about your graphics card that is affecting your NIC - or, more specifically, drivers / software that you through were related to your graphics card but that in fact are not (such as the nVidia System software / nVidia System monitor....)