VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE Crashing

[iambitjelly]

I’m having trouble with a strange BSOD when playing Black Mesa. In the very first section of the game (during the introductory tram ride) the game will freeze, the music will start to skip, and my laptop will BSOD and tell me that a “VIDEO_TDR_ERROR” has occurred. This has happened twice, although the second time I got farther along the ride before the crash.

My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 5523 with an Nvidia GeForce 630M and i7 processor, which is enough to run the game just fine at 60 fps / 1280x720 before it crashes. All of my drivers (GPU, Windows update, etc.) are up-to-date, as far as I can tell, and I have never had this problem with any other source games, including CS:GO, Half-Life 2, and Portal. I used the GameFront installer package from the wiki installation guide to download the game.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

EDIT: I’m running Windows 8.1

[sersoft]

This indicates that an attempt to reset the display driver and recover from a timeout failed.

you need to change the thermal compound or underclock your GPU a little

[iambitjelly]

Yeah I thought it might be a heat issue since laptops are notoriously bad at cooling. I’ll try underclocking the GPU and see if that gets me anywhere.

[sersoft]

speaking from experience, changing thermal paste works a hell of a lot better, and you will get an opportunity to clean out the dust that might have accumulated on the copper heatsink of your laptop

if you don’t feel comfortable opening the laptop because it’s still under warranty, call Dell and tell them that you need their permission to change the thermal paste, if you tell them you are a pro at this they won’t void your warranty

after changing the thermal paste on my laptop the turbo boost went from 1.6Ghz to 2.8Ghz and the GPU was crashing at stock 500Mhz now it runs 24/7 stable at 700Mhz B)

[CPU]

Be SURE and clean. There’s a very easy way to do it.