VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE and “Display driver stopped responding”: how to fix it
Windows gives the graphics card two seconds to finish what it is doing. If it does not, Windows resets the driver: the screen goes black and comes back, with “Display driver stopped responding and has recovered”. If the reset fails, or it keeps happening, Windows stops with VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE (0x116). Either way the card stopped responding, and this is how to find out why.
Updated 10 November 2026
What TDR is
TDR stands for timeout detection and recovery. When the graphics card takes longer than two seconds (the
default) to finish a task, Windows decides it has hung, resets the driver and redraws the desktop. A game
may close or go black; the desktop comes back. Event Viewer records it under Windows Logs,
System, as event 4101 from Display, naming the driver: nvlddmkm
is NVIDIA’s, amdkmdag and atikmpag are AMD’s.
If the reset itself fails, or the card hangs six times within a minute, Windows stops with a blue screen:
VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE, naming the same driver file — nvlddmkm.sys or atikmpag.sys,
for example. It is the same problem, gone one step further.
The usual causes
- The driver: a damaged install, a very old driver, or a new one with a bug for your card or game.
- An overclock or undervolt on the card, set in a tuning tool such as MSI Afterburner, or a memory overclock the card cannot hold when it is hot.
- Power: a power supply too small or ageing, a power cable not pushed fully home (the 12V-2x6 or 12VHPWR connector on newer cards must be fully seated), or a high-power card fed from one cable split in two.
- Heat: dust, a failing fan, or a card that has run hot for years.
- The rest of the PC: an unstable processor or memory profile can show up as graphics crashes too — Intel 13th and 14th gen processors without their microcode fix among them.
- A failing card, once everything else is ruled out.
How to fix it
- Clean install the newest driver. NVIDIA’s and AMD’s installers both offer a clean install or factory reset option. If that does not help, remove the driver completely with Display Driver Uninstaller in Safe Mode and install it fresh. If the trouble started with a new driver, try the one before it.
- Undo any tuning. Reset clocks, voltage and fan curve to defaults in whatever tool set them, and as a test uninstall tuning tools and overlays altogether.
- Check the power. Every cable fully home at both ends; where the power supply has enough sockets, one cable per power socket on the card; and a power supply big enough for the parts — the PSU calculator works it out.
- Check the temperatures under load with a stress test, and clean out the dust.
- Rule out the rest of the PC: switch off the memory profile for a few days, update the BIOS, and on a 13th or 14th gen Intel processor check for the fix.
- Try the card in another PC, or another card in this one, if it goes on.
Should you raise TdrDelay?
Many guides suggest giving the card longer before Windows steps in, by raising TdrDelay in the
registry. Microsoft documents that setting for driver developers testing their drivers, and says end users
should not change it. It hides the hang rather than fixing it: the card is still stopping for seconds at a
time.