The NVIDIA OpenGL driver lost connection with the display driver...

[Martin Levac]

Ever seen this? Not me. First time in a decade of using Windows 7. Never happened with directx games, of course, because it's an error message for opengl. However, personally I have see a similar error message for directx apps/games, and others with ATI and Intel graphics have reported this and similar error messages, so the problem is not unique to nvidia/opengl. Anyways, found the solution.

 

Links to explain:

 

https://msdn.microsoft.com/windows/hardware/drivers/display/timeout-detection-and-recovery

http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3007

 

In these links (and about a thousand other links on the same problem), the proposed solution is to increase the delay (TdrDelay key) from 2 seconds (default) to 8 seconds (or more), with the logic that a longer delay will prevent the error message from showing, and allow the game/app to continue normally. That doesn't actually fix the problem, because the problem is TDR itself, not the game, not the app, not the display driver, not nVidia, not opengl, not the hardware, not a poor performance PC, not the overclocking, not the cooling, not anything else but TDR itself. I tried increasing the delay, didn't work.

 

The correct solution is found in the Microsoft link, but instead of increasing the delay, turn off TDR altogether with the TdrLevel key instead of the TdrDelay key.

 

=== begin instructions===

 

Registry Editor:

 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers

 

If TdrLevel key does not exist, create it:

 

While GraphicsDrivers is selected, open "Edit" menu and select "new";

 

DWORD value for 32 bit Windows

QWORD value for 64 bit Windows (edit = QWORD doesn't work, use DWORD with 64bit as well)

 

Then name this key:

 

TdrLevel

 

And set its value to:

 

0

 

(edit, sometimes people just do exactly what they're told without thinking, so here's a little extra instruction to make sure that doesn't happen)

 

- Close Registry Editor, save changes -

 

THEN

 

Reboot computer.

 

=== end instructions ===

 

Be aware that it will not prevent a delay due to natural hardware/software limits, but it will prevent TDR from shutting down the game/app so that if for example a game appears to hang for a second or two because of poor computer performance, it will just appear to hang for a second or two, then continue normally, instead of crashing to desktop with an error message.

 

In my case, it doesn't just shut down the game, it also corrupts my graphics drivers so that I end up with constant graphics artifacts, and I have to reboot to make them go away and return things back to normal. At first, I thought I broke my graphics card and would have to buy a new one (cuz I did break one once and it did cause graphics artifacts, but permanently, reboot didn't make them go away), that's the effect of TDR for me, but fortunately I have a brain and sometimes I use it. Well, others with really powerful computers working perfectly, or even doing seemingly simple activities like browsing the web for example, have also reported the same error message. What a brilliant "feature" of modern operating systems, ya?

 

Anyways, if you've seen this error message (while playing Avorion, or doing anything else for that matter), and you try this solution, report back please.

[Splutty]

One of the most annoying features in Windows, ever.

 

It's the cause of almost 99% of the so called 'driver crashed and recovered' type of bullshit, which screws up all sorts of things. Not only games, but also Firefox, all scrolling OpenGL based applications, DX renderers, etc.

 

The other 1% is actual hardware failure (Or closer to 0.000001% probably :D

[Wilponderoci]

I also have way over spec and get abysmal stuttering and freezes when I shoot.

[Martin Levac]

I also have way over spec and get abysmal stuttering and freezes when I shoot.

That's a performance problem due to current lack of code optimization. It's different than a crash-to-desktop due to TDR. Turning off TDR will not fix/prevent performance problems.

 

TDR is not a game feature, it's a Windows feature. Follow the Microsoft link in my previous post for an explanation of TDR.

[Martin Levac]

Even though I set TdrLevel = 0, I still got a TDR error about 10 minutes ago. I was trying some changes with broadcastinterval and workerthreads in the server.ini file for one of my galaxies, and the error popped up first time I hyperjumped. So I figured the registry key doesn't work. So I checked it again and noticed that there's other keys but they're Dword instead of Qword in spite of my Win7 version being 64bit. Anyways, I changed it to Dword and the error didn't pop up the few times I HJ'ed again in the last few minutes. Dunno, maybe that did it. I did notice that now when I hyperjump, the mouse cursor now appears as an overlay right in the middle of the screen with the "working" cursor, as if to show the app is working, like when we start an app for example.

 

Going to edit first post so people don't go with Qword uselessly.