"Display Driver stopped responding and has recovered"

[Yureina]

So... i've found myself facing an odd computer error that I have not seen before...

Here is the error message as it comes up on my computer:

This error is coming up, specifically, after a few moments of gameplay in a specific new game (Dragon Age II), which pretty much makes it impossible for me to actually play the game. The error message implies that this is some kind of video card problem, and yet I had absolutely no problems whatsoever with playing the demo for this game, either a week ago or earlier today. That leads me to believe that this isn't a game-related problem. It also does not seem to affect any other game on my system. I should be able to run this game quite easily, albeit on low graphics. Instead... I get this junk.

I did all the typical stuff that one would expect. I got myself new drivers (they weren't that old though...), opened and cleaned out my PC tower, and fiddled with the graphics settings to see if running on lower resolutions would take care of this problem. Alas... nothing has worked. ;_; And yes, I searched this specific error on Google, but it pretty much just says stuff that I either have already tried, or simply do not know how to do (aka, overheating, as well as some way to prevent this error from happening)

Oh, and its Vista 32-bit, with an ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT graphics card.

Has anyone else run into this sort of error before? What kind of solutions do I have to try to fix this problem?

*sigh*

 

[Julianking93]

Huh... that's... odd >>
From my own experience, that might just be a power supply problem. In other words, power may not be getting to your graphics card right now for whatever reason. Try checking that to see if it could be the problem
Could also be that your system just needs to be rebooted as that can happen frequently.
Try rebooting the computer in "Safe mode" to see if that might identify or fix the problem.

Sorry if that doesn't help or if you've already tried that :/

 

[Admiral Stukov]

I've had a similar problem once, but I'm sorry to say that after many hours of messing around with it I gave up and started hating ATI with a burning passion =/

As for actual advice, the only thing I can think of that you haven't already tried is a full OS re-install.

[sub]And if you end up having to re-install, try to switch OS to either Windows 7 or XP, Vista is bollocks.[/sub]

 

[Admiral Stukov]

I found this lovely wall of text while hunting around on some forums I found through Google.

Wall o' text

This was apparently working for some people, so you could give it a shot.

Also, have you tried running an older game? If it does the same thing in that case it may be a problem with the actual card itself.

Nvidia drivers won't do much for an ATI card.

 

[Yureina]

I fiddled with the settings some more, and ended up accidentally discovering that turning my DirectX down from V11 to V9 ended up solving my problem. I am now starting to progress through this game. Only took me 5 hours of hell to get there. x_x

I guess... problem solved! Though... being forced to turn down yet another graphics-related setting does not ease my mind at all about the inevitable day when current-gen games will be too much for my computer to handle. ;_;

*hugs* Thanks for the replies!

Moo?

And yes, I only got around 4 hours of sleep. But... it was really nice. :3

 

[Admiral Stukov]

I fiddled with the settings some more, and ended up accidentally discovering that turning my DirectX down from V11 to V9 ended up solving my problem. I am now starting to progress through this game.

There's something I should have though about. To run DX11 you need a card built for it, IE newer than 08. Most games will just stop you from enabling the option, but a few will bug out.
Just something to keep in mind in the future.

Nvidia drivers won't do much for an ATI card.

Probably should have edited it for ATI drivers. But I am lazy. Still, same basic principle.

Probably, but I know nothing of ATI, thus I don't make assumptions.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

I fiddled with the settings some more, and ended up accidentally discovering that turning my DirectX down from V11 to V9 ended up solving my problem. I am now starting to progress through this game. Only took me 5 hours of hell to get there. x_x

You were forcing a DX9 GPU to try and run DX11? Yeah, that would have been your problem. Any DX10/DX11 specific instructions would have caused a GPU-driver conflict (a problem with driver packages that cover several generations of GPU) and resulted in a reset.