Forum Discussion
Dreaded nvlddmkm.sys error id 14/153
I'm just an average girl who loves to play FFXIV and BG3 and one day my old gaming laptop(CPU: intel i7-10750h 2.60 ghz, GPU: nvidia geforce rtx 2060, 6gb) started to show black screen with only sound, which forces me to reboot. It just happened one day and decided to persist, every **bleep** time when I log into any games, and I was almost pulling my hair off until I managed to barely fix...? it. Here's what I tried.
First, I went into event viewer and found tons of nvlddmkm.sys error, id 14. Which means it's nvidia driver error. So I DDUed it and installed nvidia driver version 566.36. And It didn't work.
Second, after DDU failed I also deleted windows 11 update KB5077181. According to some people, that update was the culprit of nvidia driver crash. And DDUed again. Sadly, it didn't work either.
So I just factory reset my windows 11 and reinstalled EVERYTHING, including windows 11 and nvidia driver 566.36. And finally... I was free. At least for a month. It started again. like, a week ago. I was, of course, so flustered, but then I remembered windows 11 automatically updated itself(Which I already paused, and that sucker insisted. I hate you, windows 11.), and I also updated nvidia driver with nvidia app just one day before the problem began.
My theory is, nvidia driver somehow crashed with windows 11 and both of them got broken. Also, nvlddmkm.sys is a kernel mode file, controlling connection between windows and nvidia gpu. If this breaks, bsod happens because the connection fails. DDU it, nvlddmkm.sys is fine now, but windows 11 isn't. it breaks it again, bsod comes back. Plus, windows sometimes automatically updates gpu driver by itself?? and this may also break the original driver file, causing bsod. Idk if this is real or not, but I do know that my cpu and gpu are not getting along quite well.
After I factory reset my laptop again, I installed windows 10, not 11(I just didn't want to deal with windows 11's forceful automatic update. I really hate you, windows 11.), nvidia driver 566.36 from their site directly(no app program), and before that updated my chipset driver. BIOS too. And that error finally went away. I can't actually pinpoint what exactly made that error go away... but at least I can finally play games without any bsod.
I can't afford to try other methods, or test my theory. I don't want to take any other chances. But if you're suffering from this god-forsaken nvlddmkm.sys error, just like me, feel free to try this method. Let me know if you fixed it or not. I really hope this works for you.