If you get the error "NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, version XXX.XX stopped responding and has successfully recovered", here are my 5 cent and experience!
The Thief’s Guild patch game rendered completely unplayable to me. After 3-4 minutes of play my screen freezes with sound still continuing and after alt tab I can see the notification that the NVidia driver stopped working. According to GPU-Z immediately before the crash GPU usage peaked at 99% and that 0%. Btw temperature never goes over 75C in my system.
Important thing to say is that I have not experienced any kind of trouble with ANY other game installed except to Elder Scrolls Online. And those include GPU intensive games like GTA5, Diablo, Dark Souls (even 3), Witcher 3, Grim Dawn etc.
My system is Alienware 17 laptop (2014) with Intel i7-4710MQ, and Optimus (Intel 4600 + Nvidia 880m GTX), RAM 16GB, SSD 850 Samsung 500GB, 1TB HDD, SSD 80GB M2 running under Windows 7. I do not overclock, run stock video bios, stock MB bios.
I spent 3 weeks browsing forums and trying all sorts of thing to resolve the issue. Those included:
1. Shuffling with multiple NVidia drivers from 344.75, 345.20, 350.12, 355.82, 358.50, 362.00 with DDU clean beforehand. I have not tried latest drivers 364.x from NVidia, as people suggest they brick adapter. Btw one of the best drivers TDR-wise appeared to be 353.49, kudos to the guy here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/3do60l/if_you_get_the_error_nvidia_windows_kernel_mode/
2. Adjusting TDR Registry Keys as of
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff569918(v=vs.85).aspx
3. Setting various power savings options, including High performance profile and use “off” setting for PCI Express – Link State Power Management
4. 3D Settings in NVidia Control Panel -> Power Management mode -> Prefer maximum performance. PhysX -> set to GeForce GTX 880M instead of auto-select.
5. Disabled sleep, hibernation etc.
6. Physically cleaned machine and repasted GPU and CPU heat sinks.
7. Removed NVidia HD Audio drivers and disable NVidia Audio device.
8. Removing and rebuilding UserSettings.txt.
9. Tried SET RequestedNumJobThreads "-1"->0, SET RequestedNumWorkerThreads "-1"->0 as some people suggested. That actually led to longer loading times, but crash came after 3 minute in-game anywy.
10. Running game on medium to low settings. FPS > 110, GPU usage 41-45% and then bump 99% and freeze.
11. Also I tried medium-low settings for both ESO64.exe and ESO.exe. GPU usage falls to 35-50%, temperature maxed at 69C, but after 3-4 minutes, or sometimes even sooner, GPU usage peaked at 99% then 0% and game crashed. As I have said before this applies only to ESO. Other games work just fine.
12. Also there were numerous "Failed to create vertex buffer: hr=887a0005" messages in the "..Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\liveeu\Logs\client.log". I tried with the following advice
https://help.elderscrollsonline.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/31903/~/why-am-i-crashing-and-missing-textures-with-the-error-failed-to-create-vertex by settings "Language for non Unicode programs" to English (United States), but it did not help. Game still crashed.
Finally, the only solution that worked for me was underclocking 880m gtx with NVidia Inspector by 20-30Mhz (
https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/nvidia-inspector-download.html), lowering base clock to 924MHz effectively. Now the game is able to run on high settings with 95-100 fps, which I adjust to 60 with in game v-sync to ease the strain on the adapter (btw does it actually help?)
I do not have to undeclock chip for other games, but apparently in the latest patch it employs some GPU intensive code, that is not particularly optimized at the moment. Also I guess 880m gtx chip is unstable at stock clocks. After underclocking the game crashes sometimes, but mostly based on some addons (LUA) errors.
Offtopic: installing latest EVGA Precision X (for the OSD feature) system bricked my LCD screen by writing incorrect data to EEPROM. I tried to reflash the lcd eeprom from Linux, but eventually I had to replace it, since I lacked correct EEPROM for my screen.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/evga-precision-x-and-windows-7-8-8-1-and-especially-10-bricking-systems.781467/
Thanks.