hello GigaDude
try this site, it looks like some people have had some success with this problem, good luck, i had the same problem with Nvidia, thats why i went over to ATI.

Display Driver atikmdag and nvlddmkm Stopped Responding

hi GigaDude
it seems there is a 1001 solutions to this problem but very few if any seem to work, what will work on one system wont work on another, the only thing i can tell you is to check things like temps and memory, rivatuner seems to be helping some people but as i say what works on their system may not work on yours, i think the bottem line is nobody knows what causes this and nobody knows how to fix it 100%, seems strange to me it afflicts both Nvidia and ATI cards, if it was a driver it would only affect one or the other, and its not vista as i had it on xp, if i were you i would play around with clock speeds, both over and under clocking them, also try turning up and down the voltage to the card, start slow and low and see how it goes, you may be lucky and hit it first time lol, i wish you luck with this m8.

Hi GigaDude,

I too had this problem and as stoneys-nutz has suggested, there are plenty of theories and "suggested" solutions on how to solve this problem. Do a Google search on this and you'll come up with hundreds of threads/posts. This error is prevelent with both ATI and Nvidia under Vista.

One of my many posts about this problem here - The Display driver has stopped working - The Saga

For "me", the problem went away when I replaced my "faulty" video card.

Bottom line is there is no one hard fix solution for this error

Good luck.

hi again GigaDude
rivatuner seems to be the one that gets the best results, follow the link below and download it, i would read all the readme's that come with it first and remember to go low and slow on the settings, good luck, i hope you are able to sort this out.


RivaTuner v2.24 download from Guru3D.com

Not to throw a wrench in the works, but lowering your GPU clock speeds from default specs isn't really "fixing the problem" if that works, it’s just hiding it.

However if by lowering your clock speeds yields positive results, i.e. no more "Display stopped responding" errors, then I suggest you replace your card as it is incapable of running at it's designed default speeds.

Also, running tweaking tools on problematic hardware/software isn’t really a good idea as you could wind up getting false positives…or creating more problems.

Just my two cents.