How to Fix the ‘Display Driver Stopped Responding and Has Recovered’ Error on Windows 10

This cumbersome error mostly appears when playing a high-graphic game or browsing the internet. What causes the display drivers to stop responding and recover error? The issue is as a result of the graphics card not responding in time. The Timeout Detection and Recovery feature attempt to reinitialize the graphics card using the Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM). The error causes one or more applications to freeze and at times may result in the computer being stuck in a blue or black screen of death. In this step by step tutorial, you will learn a few ways of how to fix the ‘display driver stopped responding and has recovered error’.

Prerequisites

To follow along with this tutorial, you will need the following:

Your computer (of course)

A working internet connection (one of the methods requires internet access)

Method #1: Reduce the programs running in the background

Having too many programs running causes memory and performance issues. Ensure that only the programs you are using are running. This is a simple trick that may fix your problem. Hover around the taskbar and right click on the programs you want to kill then select ‘Close Window’ as shown below:

Method #2: Update your Graphics and display drivers

If the first method did not work, your display drivers may be out of date. This method will show you how you can update your display and graphics drivers.

Note: This method requires a working internet connection.

Step 1

Click on the search icon on the taskbar, search for ‘device manager’ then click on the result as shown below:

Step 2

Expand the ‘Display adapters’ then right click on the graphics card below it. Select the first option as shown below:

Step 3

You will now need to select the first option to search the internet for the latest version of your drivers. Alternatively, you can use the second option if you downloaded the latest drivers on your computer. However, you should only download drivers from the manufacturer’s website.

Once your drivers are up to date, restart your computer.

Method #3: Configuring the Windows Visual Effects Settings

By default, Windows has enabled several visual effects that may be straining your graphics card. In this method, we will disable the Windows visual effects to reduce the load on your graphics card.

Step 1

Click on the windows icon on the taskbar and click on ‘settings’ as shown below:

Step 2

Search for ‘Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows’ and select the result as shown below:

Step 3

Select the ‘Adjust for best performance’ option then click on ‘Apply’ then ‘OK’ to save changes.

Your problem should now be solved.

Method #4: Configure the Time Out Detection and Recovery Settings

In this method, you will allocate more time for the graphics card before timeout to avoid the display driver error. We need to set up a new entry in the registry.

Note: Improper changes made to the registry may cause catastrophic failure and damage to your Windows operating system. Ensure you follow all the steps below to avoid unwanted system failure.

Step 1

Press ‘Windows key + R’ to open run then type ‘regedit’ and click ‘OK’ to launch.

Step 2

Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers as shown below:

Step 3

With the ‘GraphicsDrivers’ selected, Click on ‘Edit’ then select ‘New’. You then need to choose either ‘DWORD (32-bit) Value’ or ‘DWORD (64-bit) Value’ depending on your computer properties as follows:

For 64-bit, choose ‘DWORD (64-bit) Value’

For 32-bit, choose ‘DWORD (32-bit) Value’

Step 4

Name the new entry ‘TdrDelay’ then double-click it to modify it. Change the ‘Value data’ to ‘8’ then click on ‘OK’ to save changes as shown below:

Restart your computer for the changes to take effect.

Conclusion

You should now be free from the ‘Display Driver Stopped Responding and Has Recovered’ error in Windows 10. In case the error still persists, there is a good chance that the graphics card needs to be replaced.