Nvidia investigates GeForce driver bugs causing black screens

Nvidia has confirmed a bug in its GeForce Game Ready Driver version 621.01, which was released to support Microsoft’s Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD). Users have reported various issues, including video freezes in web browsers such as Chrome and Edge, as well as in the VLC Media Player.

In several instances, users experienced black screens lasting several seconds. These issues have been reported by owners of the RTX 5080 graphics card, though the RTX 4090 also appears to be affected. Some problems occur when starting a game during video playback, while others happen during low GPU load.

Technical logs from affected users have shown Windows Event ID 153 related to the ‘nvlddmkm’ driver, as well as LiveKernelEvent 141 and 117, which indicate GPU timeout and recovery events. Nvidia has opened an official bug report and is requesting that affected users submit diagnostic dump files to assist in their investigation. A timeline for a corrected driver has not yet been announced.