Video Driver "Amdkmdap"

Archlvt

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Video driver "Amdkmdap" has stopped working and has recovered is a message I've been getting a lot lately. It used to only occur when I was playing starcraft 2, but now it's doing it in Oblivion as well. Basically, the whole computer freezes for 8 or 9 seconds, goes black for another 5 or 6 seconds, and restores itself. Starcraft 2 always recovers, but about 20% of the time, Oblivion stops working and shuts itself down.

This happens every 30 or 40 minutes. My gpu temp is 48-52*c when this happens during Oblivion and SC2. Here's an odd thing though: It never, ever happens in sc2 when I'm playing against the AI, it ONLY happens when I'm playing other people on battle.net. The more players, the more often it freezes. 2v2 matches are impossible to play. Yet oblivion is an offline game and it still happens.

I'm running on an Intel core 2 duo 2.33ghz E6550
2 GB ram on vista 32-bit
powercolor hd radeon5770 1gb
nice new Antec 650w psu bought specifically for this vcard.

Here's the thing, when I was using nvidia cards, it was a simple thing to update my drivers. Just go on the nvidia website, find my card, enter my OS and download. I don't understand all this catalyst crap for ati. I googled "5770 video drivers" and I was taken to an amd site where it said to download Catalyst. I'm using version 2010.0302.2233.40412, which is weird because I always hear people talking about version 9 and 10.1 and stuff.

Am I missing something? Am I supposed to have something other than catalyst? Am I using the newest Catalyst? I don't know why this has to be so much more cryptic than nvidia, even when I downloaded catalyst it just felt like a guessing game and I ASSUMED I was all set for drivers so I left it alone.
 
Okay it's installed, I'll come back if it doesn't work. Are you sure that this is what was causing the problem though?
 
Most of what they're talking about, I'm not willing to try. I'm not confident enough in my computer skills to be tinkering with some of this stuff. I'd like to point out too that I play a lot of different games, not just sc2 and oblivion. There are probably 15 different games on my pc, some high performance, some not so much.

Clocked in about 2 hours of Oblivion tonight... No sign of errors yet, the driver update may have done it.
 
I know this is a really old thread, but I finally found the solution, and I wanted to make it public so everyone else (I know a lot of people have this problem) who is experiencing this problem, can fix it.

The solution is quick and easy. This is a vista-catalyst problem.

Right-click on your desktop, and go to Personalize.
Click on window color and appearance.
(I believe there was another step here, clicking on a blue link on the following window, but as I look now, it takes me right to the last step. If it gives you a list of themes, ignore this step, if not, click on the blue link)
Change the theme to Windows Vista Basic, Windows Aero is what was causing problems with the display driver. 2 days so far and no errors.

Hope this helped some poor soul, I know this has been tormenting me for a good 3 months. (it was happening awhile before my first post.)
 
Sorry for resuming an old thread, but the problem I have is more or less the same described here.
I've had issuses with it for about 4 months, the first problems given when playing Command & Conquer 3 (both TW and KW). The game wouldn't load models and textures correctly, and after a good while it would shut itself down. A couple of times it crashed my PC. I thought at first of a RAM problem, so I have replaced it about a month or two ago, but it didn't work.
Then I tried playing other games, such as COD4. The symptoms are those already described in the thread: screen freezes for a while, then it would go black for a few seconds, and then resume. Maybe. Because some times it didn't resume: it crashed instead. And more recently it wouldn't even reboot at first shot without giving me a BSoD.
I couldn't realize at first what it was, so I tried going back to Windows when such problem occurred, and I could see the warning message saying that something had stopped working and was resumed, it was the driver video.
But what I realized recently is even more absurd: it happens even when I play games with little requirements such as Bejeweled 2 and 3. Same error, same freezing, same black screen.

I think after all of this evidences that the problem occurs when playing games. I've changed SO two times while I had this problem: I had Win7 64 bit, then I had Win Vista Home Premium 64 bit, then I returned back to its 32 bit (because of the serial still attached to the case).

I have an ATI Radeon HD 4850 Sapphire with 1GB dedicated memory. I was using the most basic of the Windows skins - the Windows Standard (the one which looks like Win 2000). I tried chainging it to Vista Basic as pointed by the thread's author.

On a note, I don't know if I have drivers installed. Logics should tell me I do, but when I tried to fix things via drivers, it all messed up things and I found myself with drivers but incorrect displaying, so I disinstalled all ATI drivers using the Control Panel and rebooted my PC. Strangely enough I have now an ideal resolution displaying (1440x900 which is the fittest my monitor can support). I also read around the Webs that the Catalyst can give trouble to some. I'd like to know more about this.

Hoping in a fast and helpful reply. This thing is going on for too much. Not even formatting can solve this problem, and the only solution would seem to replace the video card, which given my situation is out of question.
 
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