Nvidia drivers causing GPU to stop responding?

[Kaiju]

Since an install of the latest official WHQL drivers from Nvidia, I keep getting numerous black screens and then notifications that my GPU has stopped responding but has recovered.

I've tried pretty much every official WHQL driver from 181.xx to 258.xx. The results are the same.

The weird thing is if I uninstall the driver and just use the stock Microsoft drivers, I get no problems whatsoever.

Any ideas? I'm stumped.

I have a 9800GTX+ on Windows 7.

My CPU and memory are all on stock settings.

I have updated all drivers and Windows updates.

I have ran Memtest+ numerous times, my RAM is fine.

I have Rivatuner testing the card under-clocked to no avail.

 

[Kaiju]

Thanks for the quick responses.

I will loosen those memory timings tomorrow as it's 2AM and i'm on the laptop in bed.

Graphics temps are around 60C, so no problems there.

The PSU is a Corsair HX520W, so it's fairly reliable. Not that i'm counting it out though.

Will get back to you.

Night fellas.

 

[Kaiju]

Right, so I tried setting all the memory timings to the highest possible value in the BIOS, but I was still getting errors.

I then opened the case and took a closer look at the graphics card and there was quite a bit of dust around.

I took it out and there was a bit of hair which looked like it was sitting between the slot and card itself.

Shocking!

I resat the card and the problem has, so far, disappeared.

Thanks for the support.

----------------------

Oops, spoke too soon. Got the error opening a video on youtube. The video just came up as a blank green screen and then I got the dreaded message stating the GPU recovered.

Back to the drawing board.

 

[Kaiju]

Are you sure you don't have an ATi card? You're talking about problems exclusive to ATi.

I'm sure. LOL

I've read people will all cards with this problem. I think I will buy a cheap card by ATi in the meantime and see what happens.

 

[Kaiju]

It happens during video streaming, flash related web pages, basically anything which taxes the GPU.

Thanks for that Owenb, I turned hardware acceleration off for flash but alas i'm still getting the same problem.

 

[Kaiju]

So games too?

I have never tried.

I am running Microsoft drivers at the moment as it's impossible to do anything with the error happening every 2-3 minutes before eventually freezing.

I will install the driver tomorrow (almost half twelve now) and let ya know.

Thanks!

 

[Kaiju]

Just to update, the errors became more frequent in the last few days to the point where I was getting BSOD's indicating 'BUGCODE USB' and 'MEMORY MANAGEMENT.'

I took out all my USB peripherals and the BSOD's disappeared.

In the last day or two since using the front panel USB ports, I've not had one BSOD.

I still get the GPU driver not responding but it is definitely more stable. This leads me to believe my motherboard is on the out.

I will be buying a cheap ATi card this week, so will update later.

If I have the same problem with it, I plan to get a new motherboard.

 

[Kaiju]

That USB thing sounds rather strange, did you install any new USB device recently or has it got worse on its own?

Also, is your GPU sharing an IRQ with anything? it will tell you in device manager if you go to view > resources by type > IRQ, I wonder if your motherboard has a few conflicting IRQ's.

You are spot on!

I just checked and the graphics card is sharing an IRQ with the Standard AHCI1.0 Serial ATA controller!

Will have to do some research as to how to change IRQ's as the last time I did that was with XP and even then I can't remember how to do it.

I'd be not so sure if mobo causes such behaviour (i've got 2xGTS250, so frankly it's the repacked 9800GTX+, and as I wrote, I suffer this error randomly under Win7x64 when I start to watch movie only). But - of course - if you check new mobo, please do some feedback here how it goes

Will do.

 

[Kaiju]

What controller is that? it might be worth first trying to install the proper manufacturers AHCI driver instead of using the generic Windows one.

Ah, it's still causing the GPU driver problem even when I disable that controller.

 

[Kaiju]

As the OP, just giving a quick update.

Bought a HD5450 and still getting the video card not responding error. I'm using Catalyst 10.9 drivers.

It's without a doubt the motherboard now. Still getting BUGCODE USB BSOD's and the network adapter only works half the time.

 

[Kaiju]

Another quick update. I bought a Gigabyte G41M-Combo motherboard and every problem I had before has gone.

Case closed for me.