GeForce 621.01: black screens and video freezes, Nvidia has filed a bug, roll back to 617.42

The GeForce Game Ready driver 621.01 came out on 21 October 2026. Since then reports have piled up about videos that freeze and monitors that go black for a few seconds. ComputerBase and WinFuture covered it on 24 October. According to both, the vendor has logged the bug. Both rest on user reports, and neither Nvidia nor the outlets have published a measurement.

This post is based on those two reports. We have not tested the driver ourselves, so every symptom below is a user report at second hand.

What users report

Videos in Chrome and Edge freeze, sometimes in VLC too, and the monitors go black for a few seconds. The picture usually comes back without a restart, because Windows restarts the driver component. ComputerBase says the problems also occur with no game running. One user reports six dropouts in a day with a single video in Edge and a barely loaded GPU. In some cases, starting a game during video playback triggers the fault.

Most reports name the RTX 5080. WinFuture writes that RTX 4090 owners also report problems, up to crashes. Many affected machines have two or three monitors, and whether that matters is unknown.

How to spot it in the Windows event log

These entries show up in the reports:

• Event ID 153 referring to the Nvidia driver nvlddmkm
• LiveKernelEvent 141 and 117, tied to an unresponsive graphics driver and its recovery

WinFuture lists further symptoms from individual users: micro-stutter with G-Sync, voltage limit problems, a black screen at startup or after sleep, and a missing profile C for DLSS Frame Generation in the control panel. On 480 Hz G-Sync monitors the picture drops out every 10 to 15 seconds, while 360 Hz runs stably.

What Nvidia has said

An Nvidia employee confirmed in the Nvidia forum that a bug report exists and diagnostic logs are being collected (ComputerBase, second hand). Affected users are asked to send the dumps from C:\Windows\LiveKernelReports\WATCHDOG to driverfeedback@nvidia.com. When a revised driver will arrive is open.

WinFuture points out that 621.01 moves from the R615 branch to R620 and suspects the cause there. That is not confirmed.

Rolling back to 617.42

ComputerBase says several users report that the dropouts went away with driver 617.42 of 6 October. WinFuture recommends removing 621.01 cleanly with Display Driver Uninstaller. The Nvidia App can reinstall the earlier version as well. According to WinFuture, going back costs you Advanced Shader Delivery.

WinFuture says Phantom Blade Zero (28 October) and Crimson Desert Enhanced (29 October) are best optimised in 621.01. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is already optimised in 617.42. If you want one of the two new games, weigh the dropouts against the optimisation.

For workstations and fleets

On machines that run video calls and browser video all day, this fault hits work and not only gaming. If you distribute drivers centrally, for example through Intune or WSUS, hold 621.01 until a corrected version is out. Neither source says whether the Linux driver is affected.

The sources of 24 October name no fix. If you do not have the driver yet, stay on 617.42 and read the Nvidia forum and ComputerBase before the next update.

Further sources

• ComputerBase: GeForce driver 621.01, Nvidia confirms black screens: symptoms, event IDs, Nvidia statement, dump path
• WinFuture: GeForce 621.01 problems: G-Sync at 480 Hz, branch change R615 to R620, DDU, games
• Simple Icons: Nvidia: logo, CC0