display driver stopped working and has recovered

[colsay]

Hi     I have a Sony VPCCW1S1E. 18 months trouble free and now about 4 times a day it crashes with "Display driver NVIDIA windows kernel mode driver version 259.57 stopped working and has successfully recovered".     If you Google "display driver nvidia etc" there are hundreds of entries so this is clearly a common problem and I am a bit disappointed I am drawing a blank with Sony Support. As it is out of warranty I don't feel like footing the bill to investigate what almost certainly is a very common design/manufacturing fault.     Help, anyone??

[Iain_L]

Have you recently updated the display driver? My CW1 worked absolutely fine until I used the Vaio Update, and installed the Nvidia Graphics driver 8.17.12.5957. Once I had done that it started displaying exactly the same signs that you are describing (although I have to say that I can't rememebr the kernal mode driver number that was displayed). I restored my machine to factory settings, and kept the original graphics driver instead of updating it. Ever since then the problem has gone away, and the machine works as it used to ie faultless.

[Leilah89]

Hi, I had exactly the same problem with my CW laptop. I tried all other suggestions on this website and taking my laptop to a PC repair shop to no avail. I noticed that the problem only occured when using the new version of FireFox (my laptop worked fine on the previous versions of FireFox) and not at any other time or when using Internet Explorer. I deleted FireFox about two months ago and now use Google Chrome with (touch wood) no more problems.      

[counterlock]

Hi colsay, youll be glad to hear that is more than likely only a driver problem rather than the dreaded nvidia one that you have read so much about  

You can get the original drivers from the vaio support site, so you could try uninstalling the driver and re-installing either the original or the updated one. There are instructions on how to do it here - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc725782.aspx 

[alewent40]

Hi. I too have had exactly the same problem as described in the original post. I took the advice above, removed the updated driver and downloaded the original one. The original driver comes in a zip file. When I clicked on setup.exe I got an error message, and could find no other way of installing it. I have now reinstalled the updated driver and am still getting crashes. Please could you advise? Many thanks.

[tetrapackage]

II just hope the site offers the exact driver for the exact Vaio model. Sometimes, the older your laptop, the fewer drivers available.