Display Driver not responding

[Kate2512]

New Dell laptop and recently installed Autocad Lt 2012.  I am running Windows 7 64bit with Intel (R) HD Graphics Family & NVIDIA GeForce GT 525M display drivers.  My screen keeps going black and then comes back up, I get a message saying "Display drivers stopped working and has recovered.  Display driver Intel graphics accelerator drivers for Windows 7(R) stopped responding and has successfully recovered"  Can anyone help ???? Dell have replaced my graphics card on my new laptop and I am still having problems !!?? (Drivers are also up to date)

[pendean]

Turn off hardware acceleration in LT2012, your display card cannot handle AutoCAD: 3DCONFIG command. See it that helps.

If not, then you mistrial off Win7s Theme and go with the Basic Theme (looks and acts like WinXP).

[zalant]

In the message you quoted, it sounds as if the Intel video chip was in use while you were in AutoCAD LT.  If you have both an integrated Intel video chip and a discrete NVIDIA video adapter, it would be preferable to use the NVIDIA card in AutoCAD LT.  

In many newer laptops there is a technology called NVIDIA Optimus, which provides a dual-video scenario, making it possible to assign a preference for one GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) or the other on a per-application basis.  The NVIDIA Control Panel has options for doing that.  Here is a link to an NVIDIA blog where those settings are covered.  

http://blogs.nvidia.com/2010/07/take-a-look-new-optimus-interface/

The video demonstrates the areas where the Optimus settings can be modified.  Switching AutoCAD's preference so that it always uses the higher-performance GPU could potentially have battery usage implications, however, as the NVIDIA card will likely use more power than the integrated Intel chip, so that should be taken into consideration.  If you're always plugged into a wall socket and battery usage isn't really a concern, then going with the NVIDIA GPU for AutoCAD would be my recommendation.

[sarahjbanks]

Hi... I have the same problem as another user on the Forum (NVidia Geforce GT 525M graphics card and screen going black when I try to use Autocad.

You recommended that we disable the Integrated Intel graphics card in the Bios.... but you don't offer any instructions for doing so!! This is not something the average person knows how to do.

It's very frustrating as I bought this laptop in good faith that it would be more than able to cope with all graphics packages. Please please could you issue full instructions how to sort this incompatability out?

Thanks very much,

Regards,

Sarah

[sarahjbanks]

.....how do we do that??

[Charles_Shade]

http://windows7themes.net/nvidia-disable-hardware-acceleration-in-windows-7.html

[drjohn]

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@sarahjbanks wrote:

You recommended that we disable the Integrated Intel graphics card in the Bios.... but you don't offer any instructions for doing so!! This is not something the average person knows how to do.

Thanks very much,

Regards,

Sarah

---

Since you are not familiar with this function I would strongly suggest you get someone that is knowlegdeable about BIOS setup.

But if you really want to, on boot or restart and before it gets to the loading Windbloze, (there should be a place on the screen to tell you what to press to get into BIOS)  press the key that will bring up the BIOS screen.(perhaps yours says SETUP) like with my Dell I press F2 to get into BIOS.

After entering the BIOS setup, scroll (you will need to use the arrow keys since the mouse is not installed at this point) to the video (or perhaps it says display) and see what options are offered for graphics. Follow instructions on the screen for selecting options to change.and how to change them.

If I go into my BIOS and select the video option I get a selection of AUTO or the Intel onboard graphics.  If I set it to AUTO it will use the nVidia graphics add-in card ... if I select the Onboard graphics it will use that. Then follow the instruction on your system to exit and save the setup.

That is my BIOS setup ... YMMV.

Again, you can really hose your system if you don't know what you are doing.  I would strongly recommend you get an IT person to take on this challenge.

HTH

Regards,

DJ

[zalant]

Indeed, having an IT person check for the available BIOS settings would be a very good idea.  Since writing the above post, I have learned more about the NVIDIA Optimus technology, and I've modified the post to reflect that.  On those systems, there may not be any BIOS setting to select a preferred GPU.  Instead, setting a program's preference for which GPU to use is done via the NVIDIA software and the add-ins it can place into the Windows context menu.

I also wanted to share an Intel message forum thread which covers the same error that's being discussed in here.  Several users there indicated that disabling Aero in Windows 7 cleared up the trouble (scroll to the bottom of the thread).  

http://communities.intel.com/thread/22260

I've had a few customers for whom that has also helped, while in other cases it did not.  It's still worth a try.

[k_ashton30]

Hello

I had this problem and it drove me crazy.

Found out from someone on the Intel Forum that they solved the issue by disabling Aero on the their windows 7. Thought it would be worth a try and thankfully the problem has not happened since!

To disable Aero right click on the desktop screen. Select "personalize" then select "Windows 7 Basic" from the "Basic and High Contrast Themes" menu.

Hope this helps

[Charles_Shade]

Thanks for the update on the advice.

Sometimes it has to be said more than once.

Hopefully the OP will come along and mark the solution as Solved so that otheres will know what worked and be able to readily search the solution.