Graphics driver/card problem

Nutbusta · 24 Oct 2009 at 18:06

Every so often when I start my machine the graphics driver fails to load leaving me in 800x600 and device manager error "Windows cannot initialize the device driver for this hardware. (Code 37)"

Quite often uninstalling the device in DM, restarting and reinstalling drivers sorts it out but not so much recently (I may be imagining that though)

Also the driver fails to respond and restarts watching video sometime catastrphically requiring restart. Games tend to bomb out straight away or very quickly.

My machine consists of
Q6600 (stock due to this problem)
Gigabyte P35-DS4
8800GTS (512mb version)
Akasa 850w (2x35amps on 12v rails)
4x1GB GEIL Black Dragon
4x1TB Samsung disks
60GB OCZ Vertex sys drive

I thought that the problem mainly started when I upgraded to the 4xblack dragon meaning that I was runing 4 sticks. I was mainly using the machine as a VMWare server platform and not gaming so not too worried but now I want to play games. I've tried adding volts to FSB, DDR & PCI etc. Doesn't seem to make any difference.

I don't think its power as the PSU is quite massively overspecced even for all those drives.

I even swapped out the GPU for a basic passively cooled thing and although problems were deffinatley less often the driver would still restart from time to time.

I don't think theres anything wrong with the hardware as I've run prime on all four cores both blend&small fft's & memtest for windows to test all the ram. It remains error free and stable. I'm kinda thinking I really need to play with the bios some more but stuck on what to change. If everythings at stock and running 4 sticks should I only need to add a little voltage to the ram and fsb?

I've even tried removing a couple of sticks.

Any ideas?

Nutbusta · 25 Oct 2009 at 10:14

Bumpety bump

Anyone think its worth changing the mobo?

niko · 25 Oct 2009 at 11:16

try increasing your northbridge volts ,its were your mem controller is

Nutbusta · 25 Oct 2009 at 11:28

niko said:
try increasing your northbridge volts ,its were your mem controller is

I tried upping it by .1 then .2

More? Whats considered safe, I have quite good airflow?

niko · 25 Oct 2009 at 11:31

Nutbusta said:
I tried upping it by .1 then .2

More? Whats considered safe, I have quite good airflow?

does your mobo have northbridge temp moniter?
if so just use your temps as a guide ,as to what is safe someone else will need to answer that one mate

niko · 25 Oct 2009 at 11:39

just re-read your op you say with 2 sticks of ram it still does it ? if so i doubt its nb volts ,in fact it sounds more like diver problems to me ,have you tried different nvidia drivers

Nutbusta · 25 Oct 2009 at 16:00

niko said:
just re-read your op you say with 2 sticks of ram it still does it ? if so i doubt its nb volts ,in fact it sounds more like diver problems to me ,have you tried different nvidia drivers

Absolutly agree on volts. So the best bet is to bang in a second hard disk and put a fresh install, maybe leaving the standard windows drivers?

I'm just trying to remember if I had the problem when I was running vista

niko · 25 Oct 2009 at 20:23

the only way ive found with driver issues is trial and error
id start with just deleting the g card drivers and trying an older set ,i think the 186.16 were very stable (might have the numbers wrong there but pre 190 drivers )and take it from there

Nutbusta · 26 Oct 2009 at 21:30

Just swapped the HD out for an old one sitting around. Fresh instal of Win 7 and the display driver failed and recovered before I could download the proper one from nvidia.com.

Guess its deffo HW or settings.... motherboard?