Technical

And yet another “nvlddmkm driver not responding” post

My rig is down. It has been down ever since I installed a new video card (upgraded from a BFG 7950GT to an XFX 8800GTX fitted with a Zalman cooler), retweaked my overclocking settings, resulting in a corrupted XP install. I figured it was time to make the transition to Vista…after all, SP1 should’ve fixed the problems, right?

Not exactly.

Knowing that Vista is extremely (!!!) sensitive to hardware stability, I took about 2 days offline to test my settings before slapping a vanilla install of 32 bit Vista Enterprise with SP1. My machine ran a stable oc of 3.2GHz at 1.6v with my 2x1Gb Kingston HyperX RAM being fed 2.55v and MCH voltage at 1.75. Ran perfectly stable using the battery of tests on my UBCD. Vista installed without complaint, and I soon got to work installing updates, drivers, and my default software environment, a la Vista. Incidentally, the driver version I used was the latest available: 182.50.

One quick unrelated complaint: Universal ABIT, your ftp sites are down. They have been down for a long time (I can remember surfing over there back in December and January and still unable to download anything). I can’t get my stupid Vista-compatible drivers or utilities for my AW9D-MAX off your site. Pathetic! I’m already rethinking my passion for your products…maybe my next rig will be built around an Asus or Gigabyte board.

Back to my Vista video driver woes…So I’m happily tweaking my rig back to functional again. Been watching movies online and off DVDs, been installing software without a hitch…when suddenly, I spy the error tab in the system tray reporting “nvvlddmkm driver has stopped responding”. This occurs intermittently every 5 to 10 minutes, but I pay it no mind since I haven’t really been pushing the hardware yet, e.g. playing a game. The game in this case is WoW. So I load into the game–Vista left my game folder intact–and I start puttering around in Dalaran and Orgrimmar…when whammo! WoW freezes…flashes my screen…then hard locks…and then I’m alt-tabbed out to Task Manager to end it. The familiar complaint pops up from the system tray, informing that Windows has recovered.

Not good when your gaming rig can’t play games due to a misbehaving driver. So I Google, and I learned that this error is a very regular occurrence with Vista users (see the 113 page forum thread at the official NVidia forums). At this point, I’m still optimistic, being the “uber tech” that I am…I figured I can, with a little investigation, overcome this setback and proceed on my merry way.

About 48 hours later, reinstalling WoW, tried registry hacks and beta drivers, driver and patch uninstalls/reinstalls, overvolting my hardware, benchmarking and stress-testing my system, and a second install of Vista, I’ve decided it’s not worth the extra headache. Vista simply is not going to behave with my hardware currently overclocked. (My system pushed the stability envelope already, having gone through 3 sets of RAM just to get it to perform the way I wanted it to.) My options now are down to two: roll back to XP or move on to Windows 7 beta. But with Windows 7 labeled as “Vista without the suck”–as one coworker put it–will it inherit Vista’s low fault-tolerance?

I feel for the folks who have untweaked hardware experiencing these same issues, and even more sympathy for the people whose understanding of tech is limited to using their pc for surfing, gaming and the occasional entertainment use. It’s a big headache when you dish out the dough for some good hardware only to be thwarted by your operating system.

More references on this problem around the web:

Dining

Shopping for a santoku

A revived interest in home cooking recently made me lament the absence of my santoku knife. Granted, it was of terrible quality after slipping out of my hands and shattering on the floor. But what I miss is that it fit perfectly in my hand and had the necessary grip I looked for. For future reference, no more cheaply made American blades (in this case it was a Calphalon 7″ santoku). A cleaver just isn’t made for fine chopping and dicing, though I’m having to adapt to hefting a bulky piece of cutlery. Now will you take a look at that Shun Classic 6.5 incher? Makes my inner chef want to RAWWRR! And there’s more of the Shun Kershaw knives to drool over at the Kershaw Online store.

Dining, Recipes

Things I learned while making a Decadent Chocolate Flan

Despite moments when it looked like my chocolate flan experiment was doomed to the garbage disposal, the end result was fantastically yummy and delicious.

  • Tripling the amount of chocolate that a recipe calls for is a sure way to make the taste buds happy
  • Brown sugar doesn’t caramelize like white sugar, better to melt it on the stove top than in the oven, with less water if any
  • Don’t attempt to re-melt the chocolate/milk mixture with eggs in it because the eggs will cook
  • Double boiling semi-sweet chocolate chips is a long, painstaking process–use a microwave next time (remember to melt at half power)
  • Use shallow dishes or single-serve dishes for flan, otherwise the flan will not descend gracefully onto its final plating

So armed with those warnings, we proceed to the actual recipe.

6oz (or less) semi-sweet chocolate chips
1-2 cups brown sugar
4 eggs
1-2 cups of milk (less milk means denser custard)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Caramelize brown sugar on stove top in a nonstick saucepan or in the oven in a baking dish. In this case I used a 5×9 glass loaf dish in a 375 degree oven…took forever, even with a little water added in. When the sugar melts, transfer to its baking dish and coat the bottom evenly. Set aside to cool and harden. Melt chocolate chips with milk until incorporated. Remove the chocolate milk mixture from heat and slowly mix 4 beaten eggs in. Add vanilla extract and stir gently. Heat the oven to 350 degrees, pour flan mixture into baking dish, then bake for 60-70 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes away clean. Remove from oven and let cool (especially if you’re using a glass baking dish). Afterwards, refrigerate overnight.

To serve, take the flan and microwave in the oven for 30 seconds or less (just enough to melt the caramel). Invert the dish on plate. Garnish with powdered sugar, brown sugar, or even mint leaves and berries for a decadent chocolatey custard. What’s the difference between custard and a flan? Not much, if you read this article on the subject.