Why do I see this Error? Display Driver Stopped Responding

It is so painful to see errors in a PC: especially the ones whose cause of occurrence does not seem to be traceable.

For example: sometimes, a PC starts to show a Blue Screen with some error: after that the PC hangs and one needs to re-start. There can be 100’s of reasons for these blue screen errors to show up. I personally have encountered this error so many times: and after spending many hours of research I used to find the solution or reason/cause of the error. Sometimes, some components are faulty [PCI-Component]

Anyway, few months back, I got a new PC. It is an ok Gaming PC and I very carefully assembled it.

After installing all the devices and drivers/softwares, I then started to use this PC.

After sometime, I occasionally started to see this error:

Display driver stopped responding and was recovered

Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered

Via event viewer, we can see this information about the error:

Event ID: 4101

Event Type: Warning

Level: 3

Name: Display

And somewhere, I also found this file name: [ntoskrnl.exe]. Not sure if and/or how it is connected to this problem.

How this error shows?

For a moment, 1-2 or may be for 3 seconds, the PC kind of hangs. Mouse and other things stop to work and then after few seconds, everything starts to work again and I see this error.

The audio does not always hang. For example: if you are hearing a song, then it is possible that it will keep playing when this error occurs.

Seeing this error was not good: I have got this PC from UK and I did not wanted any component to be faulty. PC is in warranty but sending any component from Pakistan to UK is not easy.

So I tried to find a solution with hope that this will be a software related issue and that the hardware would be ok.

In many different forums/sites, I have seen many different reasons for such error to show up.

Many people had this same issue: some of them even found the cause of this error. Most of these people said that their 3D card was faulty : ) Wow, it was so painful to read something like that. In the situation where I am, a faulty 3d card means a lot of trouble.

Only few people discovered that the issue was software related.

Anyway, after days of research I finally figured out what was wrong with my PC. Please note that the cause of this error that I am mentioning is just one of many possible causes. It is very much possible that for you, some other thing is resulting in this error.

For me, this error shows up after I play a mp3 song in my PC using JetAudio [song player].

I am not sure if this error will also show up with other Audio Players: I currently have not installed any other song players.

Also, this error only seems to show up when I play an audio mp3 song. Playing videos with different extensions does not result in this error.

When I open an mp3 song with JA, this error is generated after random time period. Sometimes, the error will show up after just few seconds of playing the first song, and sometimes, it may take minute+ time.

Now you will be wondering that maybe I misjudged the cause of the error and that something else would be wrong. At first, I too thought the same thing : )

Things to consider:

I have played games on this PC for many straight hours. Recently, I finished/ended Resident Evil 5 in 3D.

Have ended few other games too.

Have watched many movies in this PC.

This, display driver stopped responding error, had never showed up while I was doing all the above mentioned things. I never saw this error while playing games, watching movies or doing other things.

On the other hand, this error always shows up after I play an mp3 song in JA.

This situation clearly tells me what the reason is : )

See if the same is the reason for the error you see in your PC : )

For me the solution was to update JetAudio and Video-Card/Audio drivers.