I'm doomed, Someone please help!

[Scharfsch?tze]

Hey folks.

Before reading this is my specs:

- Windows vista Premium
- Nvidia Geforce 8600 GS
- 320 GB HDD SPACE
- Intel Core 2 duo prossecor T5550
- 1.83 GHz

PROBLEM: Cant play any games. Nvidia driver is damaged
And yes i tried uninstall my nvidia driver and install new one, Wont work.

5 days ago my computer freezed when i played in the Dod_Avalanche server of eGO, and i restarted my computer. And on startup, The image we can see first were we can accsess the BIOS, i have ACER computer, but anyway. My ACER Image was so bugged, it was like stripes on it bugged stripes. and i thought. * Oh no... my graphic card got burnt? But.. how... it cant be..* i have a Nvidia 8600 GS, Well it aint burnt what i found out was, "nvlddmkm.sys" was damaged, "nvlddmkm.sys" is the Nvidia Driver file, Well its damaged, and i tried to fix it. i have googeled for 4 full days. reading on other forums, and such. WITHOUT LUCK! so i came up with the Idea: i now have 2 options:

Option 1 :
- Try to somehow fix the "nvlddmkm.sys", But as i read on other forums, Peoples were saying that they gave up, and reinstalled their windows and formatted. so i dont think this is gonna work, I also tried replacing the "nvlddmkm.sys" with a clean one from the internett, Still no luck.

Option 2 : Format the PC and install windows.

- NOW THERES my problem ! [REDACTED: LET'S TRY NOT TO TALK ABOUT PIRACY ON OUR FORUMS --- RESPAWN] Just to boot up from it and use the command prompt, i entered the "FDISK", no... it wont let me CREATE,DELETE,FORMAT. I heard people said windows 98 prompt wont work to format with, And i went like " SWEET JESUS COMON IS THERE REALLY A GOD OUT THERE!?", i dont know what im gonna do.
Is vista blocking everything?.. to say it simple!

I WANT TO REMOVE VISTA COMPLETELY AND INSTALL WINDOWS XP, YES I HAVE XP CD and 98 CD , VISTA CD IS LOST, But ill dig deeper to find it......
DO YOU KNOW ? , i guess none of you know i hope so... i miss dods eGO servers, i miss THE GAMING D: right now i have watched text screens for 4 days imagine how boring...............................

Ok this text comes straight from a chat,
Scharfsch?tze:
ok listen the nvlddkm.sys is damaged as we know, when the file nvlddkm.sys is named to nvlddkm.sys as its primary. my windows login screen wont appear and i get Blue screen of death, so i went in secured windows, uh the thing that enables you to start up with no drivers, and i renamed the file nvldkkm.sys to nvldkkm.sys.old that will deactivate it the driver ... then i can start up my windows, but i cant play any games..... so i need to repair this. but how..

 

[Razor]

try removing the vid card and re-install orginal cd not online - make sure your fan is working could be overheating and shutting down your vid card

 

[Scharfsch?tze]

Nothing wrong with my Vid-card... i checked... the fan is working. no sign of damage to it either,

 

[Scharfsch?tze]

...

 

[e MpTy]

Well I don't know what I can say to fix it but I can tell you how I would trouble shoot it, mabey one of my trouble shooting steps will help you.

If that one does'nt work move onto the next.

1, Uninstall display adapter in device manager, goto www.nvidia.com get the lastest drivers 8600 GS and install and restart.

2. Uninstall display adapter in device manager then use the retail cd provided for the video card then restart.

3. If I have an secondary onboard video card, I will shut down the computer, remove the 8600 video card, fully boot the computer without the card, shut down re-insert 8600 re-boot and install drivers then restart.

4. Search google "nvlddmkm.sys", found one possable soluation, Go to windows/system32/drivers and rename nvlddmkm.sys to
nvlddmkm.sys.old. Go to the nvidia directory and find the file nvlddmkm.sy_
and copy it to windows/system32. Using the cmd window (DOS box) type
EXPAND.EXE nvlddmkm.sy_ nvlddmkm.sys. When the expansion is complete, copy
the new nvlddmkm.sys to windows/system32/drivers and restart the computer.

5. Boot into safemode, uninstall video display adapter, restart, boot again into safe mode, install video display drivers from the cd, restart, boot normally.

6. Restore to an ealier restore point with system restore.

7. Do a repair with the operating system cd.

8. Reinstall the operating system, if still not working I would take out the video card take it out back invite some buddys over grab a shotgun and prop the card on a fence and shoot it till theres nothing left lol
Thats what I would do if all those steps did'nt work

 

[dudethatrocks]

Haha, you have the ASUS version of my HP laptop,
hp dv9825nr (9700 series)
I had that problem, but it was only with playing Source games, re-installed drivers and disabled a process causing it not to function. Also when i did a full system restore it worked after that too.

 

[Singularity_0001]

Like MpTy's #6
Good bet as of now.
Do a restore point for starts.

 

[Blue Stealth]

I had this issue with my dell xps m1210 laptop which has a 7400 GO inside it. I found the problem after a few weeks of hassling dell over the phone to replace my laptop, to be damaged memory on the video card.

-Blue

 

[Terris Orian]

I had this issue with my dell xps m1210 laptop which has a 7400 GO inside it. I found the problem after a few weeks of hassling dell over the phone to replace my laptop, to be damaged memory on the video card.

-Blue

Sad to say I'am also quite familiar with this if blue isn't correct then try bumping up the ram voltage by .1 volts or so and see if that fixes it. running with only 1 stick of ram may work as this problem can also be caused by bad sticks of ram.
Unfortunately odds are its a hardware problem and not something you can fix :-(

One way to test if it is indeed you ram if you can get vista to start press Ctrl-Shift-Escape which brings up task manager then go to the performance tab, then click on resource monitor in the bottom right. then look at the memory tab, if it says there are more then 1 or 2 "Hard Faults/sec then its defiantly your ram. You can also look to see how many faults there are per program.

 

[Blue Stealth]

yeah adding onto my past problem the memory on the vid card went first and then began to damage other parts of the motherboard after me trying to force the thing to play my games. I started getting RAM errors, HDD errors, everything. I beleive the problem originated from overheating. I found a temporary fix for my machine though, but it consisted of putting ice packs under the laptop while I played. I was overseas doing this so I was SOL at that time in terms of replacing the laptop.

over time the ice didnt even make a difference, just kept getting BSOD's, and oh yeh, TONS of video corruption.

I told dell the problem was the video card, they refused to listen. They agreed to replace the RAM. fixed it for about a week or less. almost 6 months later they agreed to change out the video card, which forced them to change out the motherboard since the two were integrated. This fixed all of my problems. I have been using the laptop since they fixed it in september and have not encountered a single BSOD.

I would urge you to get in contact with HP and I hope you have a warranty.

In the rare chance that this is not a hardware issue for you, then I would uninstall all video drivers, reseat the video card if possible. then reinstall all video and directx drivers. you might also try rolling back to previous video card drivers. reseat the RAM too.

-Blue

 

[REpear]

If you want to reinstall Windows(doesn't matter which version) I suggest you Zero wipe the hard drive. This will make sure the drive is clean of any potential problems of remaining previous installs.

When you delete partitions or even reformat you do NOT clear your HD. There are computer forensic software that can recover your HD if your delete partitions or even format. I will go into detail of the in's and out's of computer forensics or HD recovery.

I suggest you use Darik's Boot and Nuke.

http://www.dban.org/

Download the iso and burn it to a CD. You cannot use the default windows burn software to burn .iso images. You must use a professional CD burning software. I suggest Nero or Roxio.

Once you have burned the iso onto a CD, your next step is to back up all your files you must have. Store the backups on an external media of some kind.

If you know your hardware devices this would be the time to download the newest drivers. Store the drivers on an external media of some kind.

When your done backingup and have the newest drivers ready, put in the CD and restart you computer. On restart you want to boot to that CD.

When the program comes up you want to do a F2. Read what the program does so you understand what it is doing. Then hit enter to continue.

Then once you see the HD selection screen. Select ALL HD's you want to Zero wipe. Use the Space Bar to select the HD(s) you want or don't want.

Next hit the M key to choose your Method of wiping the drive. Choose the "Quick Erase" Use space bar to select.

Hit the V key and choose no verification. Use space bar to select.

Hit the R key and choose 1 round. Use space bar to select.

When your ready to start the wipe process hit the F10 key.

Note: If you want to do a different method, more rounds, or add a verify process you can. I just only gave instuctions to the quickest and easiest way.

When your drive is wiped the screen will move to a Black DOS screen with a report given. You can then eject the CD and swap it to the Windows install CD.

If your installing XP ir Vista the the CD's internal formatting program format the drive. You DO NOT need to do the old way of Win98 with the 3.5in Floppy format of DOS commands. Win98(FAT32) is really outdated and cannot handle HD's over 4GB of partitions.

Install Windows as you normally would and you should be back to installing your usuall stuff in no time because you have your newest drivers predownloaded and ready to install.

 

[Scharfsch?tze]

Well I don't know what I can say to fix it but I can tell you how I would trouble shoot it, mabey one of my trouble shooting steps will help you.

If that one does'nt work move onto the next.

1, Uninstall display adapter in device manager, goto www.nvidia.com get the lastest drivers 8600 GS and install and restart.

2. Uninstall display adapter in device manager then use the retail cd provided for the video card then restart.

3. If I have an secondary onboard video card, I will shut down the computer, remove the 8600 video card, fully boot the computer without the card, shut down re-insert 8600 re-boot and install drivers then restart.

4. Search google "nvlddmkm.sys", found one possable soluation, Go to windows/system32/drivers and rename nvlddmkm.sys to
nvlddmkm.sys.old. Go to the nvidia directory and find the file nvlddmkm.sy_
and copy it to windows/system32. Using the cmd window (DOS box) type
EXPAND.EXE nvlddmkm.sy_ nvlddmkm.sys. When the expansion is complete, copy
the new nvlddmkm.sys to windows/system32/drivers and restart the computer.

5. Boot into safemode, uninstall video display adapter, restart, boot again into safe mode, install video display drivers from the cd, restart, boot normally.

6. Restore to an ealier restore point with system restore.

7. Do a repair with the operating system cd.

8. Reinstall the operating system, if still not working I would take out the video card take it out back invite some buddys over grab a shotgun and prop the card on a fence and shoot it till theres nothing left lol
Thats what I would do if all those steps did'nt work

haha . Well, I tried all theese steps already. nothing works.. i got help from Xenophek, using DBAN worked like a charm, i could delete my entire computer without any security blocking, and yer. im trying to install vista now, Thanks for the help anyway.

 

[Scharfsch?tze]

If you want to reinstall Windows(doesn't matter which version) I suggest you Zero wipe the hard drive. This will make sure the drive is clean of any potential problems of remaining previous installs.

When you delete partitions or even reformat you do NOT clear your HD. There are computer forensic software that can recover your HD if your delete partitions or even format. I will go into detail of the in's and out's of computer forensics or HD recovery.

I suggest you use Darik's Boot and Nuke.

http://www.dban.org/

Download the iso and burn it to a CD. You cannot use the default windows burn software to burn .iso images. You must use a professional CD burning software. I suggest Nero or Roxio.

Once you have burned the iso onto a CD, your next step is to back up all your files you must have. Store the backups on an external media of some kind.

If you know your hardware devices this would be the time to download the newest drivers. Store the drivers on an external media of some kind.

When your done backingup and have the newest drivers ready, put in the CD and restart you computer. On restart you want to boot to that CD.

When the program comes up you want to do a F2. Read what the program does so you understand what it is doing. Then hit enter to continue.

Then once you see the HD selection screen. Select ALL HD's you want to Zero wipe. Use the Space Bar to select the HD(s) you want or don't want.

Next hit the M key to choose your Method of wiping the drive. Choose the "Quick Erase" Use space bar to select.

Hit the V key and choose no verification. Use space bar to select.

Hit the R key and choose 1 round. Use space bar to select.

When your ready to start the wipe process hit the F10 key.

Note: If you want to do a different method, more rounds, or add a verify process you can. I just only gave instuctions to the quickest and easiest way.

When your drive is wiped the screen will move to a Black DOS screen with a report given. You can then eject the CD and swap it to the Windows install CD.

If your installing XP ir Vista the the CD's internal formatting program format the drive. You DO NOT need to do the old way of Win98 with the 3.5in Floppy format of DOS commands. Win98(FAT32) is really outdated and cannot handle HD's over 4GB of partitions.

Install Windows as you normally would and you should be back to installing your usuall stuff in no time because you have your newest drivers predownloaded and ready to install.

yeah i done that now. its all still blurry here, im gonna open my laptop and take a look on whats going on.

 

[WaterSnake]

XP is much better, I I'd try a fresh install. It won't hurt, just backup the files you can't easily recreate.

 

[Scharfsch?tze]

ok all, i have it all solved. My vista is running nice and smooth again. Thanks all,