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Still crashing in games

Craig321

Craig321

Craig321

Soldato
Joined
2 May 2004
Posts
19,950
Some of you may remember my last thread about my PC crashing after a certain amount of time in games (can be as short as half an hour and even as long as 4 hours before it crashes).

My other thread on this problem is here - there's more information on the problem: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17894163

Basically the screen will suddenly turn black, eventually the screen will go into standby mode.

I'm pretty sure it's my graphic card now, but I'd like some other opinions. I haven't RMA'd it yet as I'm getting a 24" screen in 3 days :p

It happened again earlier, so I decided to wait it out. After a while the PC gave three beeps in a row with about 1 minute gap in between them, the screen was still in standby at this point.

After waiting a while I reset the PC and got this screen indicating it had blue screened:
12-07-200821-56-29.png


There is also a minidump this time - it reckons nvlddmkm.sys caused it, but I think most of you will know blue screen reports are very inaccurate. Feel free to analyse the dump: Mini071208-01.dmp

I'm not sure if the beeps or the minidump file will help diagnose the problem, maybe somebody's had the same problem as me?

I am certain it's not dodgy drivers.

Thanks,
Craig.
 
It might not be nvlddmkm.sys causing it at all, IIRC the driver that gets listed on the minidump is the last driver that was accessed before the crash, so if you were playing a game it's very likely the last driver accessed was nvlddmkm.sys even if it was caused by something completely different.

I've reinstalled Vista as well as using Driver Sweeper multiple times in different ways, my problem is definitely not a driver issue.

Yours could be, try uninstall drivers, driver sweeper in safe mode & reinstall in safe mode.
 
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nvlddmkm.sys issues usually arise due to hardware instabilities, mostly memory related.

and those who use ballistix ram shoudl first check out the memory before they progress any further. (vistas built in memory tester is better than memtest so good to use it if you have vista,)
 
Have you tried the card in someone elses pc yet? You could also try installing a fresh copy of windows on another drive if you have one to see if that solves it. If that solves the problem then i would say it was a driver conflict somewhere.
 
Tried it on my brothers PC and it crashed twice. It's probably safe to say it is the graphic card as it did crash on his PC, but I want to make 200% sure before I RMA it as it'll put me without a PC when I send it back.

He recently got a 4870 so he's offered to swap cards with me for a week or so to see if the 4870 crashes in my PC or if the 8800GTX crashes in his PC again.
 
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Just make sure when you use the 4870 to make sure you get rid off all the nv files or you may see some crashes also and vice versa for him. If the gtx crashes a lot in his machine then you will have your answer. Sounds like the card though.
 
Craig321 said:
My PC is Prime95 stable overnight. Memory tester also brings back no errors.
Click to expand...

Prime95 is only one test, just because it's stable in that doesn't necessarily mean it will be stable when there's a 200W monster GPU to power and which is also producing additional heat.

Like has been mentioned any driver error in Vista could just as well be any other component which has caused it, since the GPU drivers are core to Vista's GUI.

Your best bet is to see if the same error occurs when everything is at stock settings, if it doesn't then you know it's overclocking related.
 
Everything is currently at stock, I haven't overclocked at all.

I mentioned that my PC is stable in Prime95 as somebody said it could be my memory, the PC would crash under Prime if the memory was dying.

I think I'm going to go with swapping my brothers 4870 for my 8800GTX for a week or so.
 
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