TechTips - NVIDIA Blue Screen of Death from Nvlddmkm.Sys

I recently experienced a BOSD (Blue Screen of Death) on my laptop running Windows Vista Ultimate. The crash dump was cryptic as usual but here is what it said.

0x00000116 (0x8811A008, 0x8E414E80, 0x00000000, 0x00000002)
nvlddmkm.sys - address 8D00A680 base at 8D0020000, datestamp *D00A680

Apparently this nvlddmkm.sys file is a huge problem with Vista and Windows 7 and causes the BSOD when it is an older version than what Vista or Windows 7 thinks it should be. To know if you have this issue for sure do the following.

1. Click Start
2. Click Run (or in the white box that says Start Search)
3. Type C:\windows\system32\drivers and hit enter
4. Find the file nvlddmkm.sys
5. Right click on the file and choose properties
6. Go to the details tab check the version
7. It probably is 7.15.11.5669 or something close to this.

So there are all sorts of posts about how you need to edit the nvlddmkm.sys file and do all sorts of command line code to get it to work. I don't think that is the case in about 80% of these BSOD. So I am going to start with the most basic method to fix this problem and we will work our way to the more complex fixes (if the easy ones don't work).

So first I would suggest that you update the driver via NVIDIA's website, this will most likely solve your problem, but I suggest you do it in a certain order of steps. So first go to the NVIDIA website I posted above and there are two options, manually choose your video card, series type, product type, etc...and a lot of basic users won't know how to find this info. So I suggest using the NVIDIA automatic option, it works great I used it on my PC as a test! The auto option will run a quick install and figure out the driver you need for your video card. It will take you to a download page where you will want to download the driver.

Once the software is downloaded you will want to go ahead and install the package, using all defaults should be fine. Once installed the system will probably ask to be rebooted, go ahead and reboot. Log back onto your system, hopefully there is no BSOD and just to double check you can go check the file and make sure it's a newer version most likely 8.17.11.xxxx or something similar. Test your PC out and if there are no more BSOD you are done, if not continue on.

If the updated driver doesn't work for you and you are still getting the BSOD then there are a few other options you can try. Another rather easy fix is to copy a good updated nvlddmkm.sys over to the computer with the problems. For this to work though you have to have a second computer with Vista or Windows 7 with a NVIDIA video card (not a lot of people will have that). If you do have an extra PC with a good working NVIDIA video card then do the following.

1. Click Start
2. Click Run (or in the white box that says Start Search)
3. Type C:\windows\system32\drivers and hit enter
4. Find the file nvlddmkm.sys
5. Right click on the file and choose properties
6. Go to the details tab check the version
7. If the version is 8.11.17.xxxx or anything newer than 7.15.11.5669 it might work
8. Close the properties page
9. Right click on the file and choose Copy
10. Find a location either network storage or thumb drive and save the file
11. Now go to your computer with the BSOD issue and navigate to the C:\windows\system32\drivers folder
12. Right click on the nvlddmkm.sys and choose rename
13. Type .old on the end (file should look like this nvlddmkm.sys.old)
14. Now copy and paste the nvlddmkm.sys off the thumb drive\CD\DVD into this folder
15. Reboot and test

If your computer has no more BSOD problems then you have successfully fixed your issue. I have heard that this fix sometimes causes errors with Internet Explorer and activeX controls, but I did it on my test PC and saw no issues, but wanted to warn that it might have adverse effects.