Display Drivers Keep Crashing

[BFMF]

Lately, I started getting the blue screen of death while playing games, or the games would simpy crash, and after the computer re-booted or the game was closed with the task manager, I would get a message telling me that my display drivers stopped working. It wasn't happening too often, but I still couldn't figure it out. This morning, I fired FSX up, and now within moments, I either get the blue screen of death, or FSX goes blank, crashes, and I get the message telling me that the display drivers stopped working.

I used driver sweep to uninstall the video card drivers, and then downloaded the current drivers for my video card. But it seems to be getting worse, and not only can I not play games, but it's constantly crashing now. It's now crashing to the blue screen of death at windows start up.

I havn't made any changes to my system lately, so i'm not sure what is causing this. Any ideas? I'm now desperate

[ozzy72]

Andrew, uninstall ALL the video drivers. Clean your registry. Reboot. Install latest drivers

[BFMF]

I can boot up into safe mode, uninstall the drivers, reboot into safe mode, and install the drivers, but It hasn't fixed anything

I can sometimes boot up into windows, but it is still extremily unstable

[NickN]

try a different driver

[BFMF]

I originally had the 160 series drivers installed, so I installed the 180.48 drivers, and I am still having problems. I'll try the 178.24 driver and see what happens

[BFMF]

Windows seems more stable, but the display drivers are still crashing when I run games, and giving me the 'Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered' message....

[NickN]

Hmmmmm

I would suspect either the card needs to be reseated in the tower slot or some other kind of hardware/driver conflict glitch.

Any BIOS settings changed lately?

Anything added lately that may have video attached to it such as DVD player software, etc?

I would uninstall the drivers clean.. then shut down unplug and open the tower.. remove and reseat the card.. (clean it while you have it out) then this time install the drivers IN Windows, reboot.. wait about 2 minutes then reboot again and set up the drivers

see what happens

[BFMF]

Any BIOS settings changed lately?

No I havn't touched the BIOS in a very long time, untill a little while ago I tried resetting the BIOS settings to 'optimal settings'

Anything added lately that may have video attached to it such as DVD player software, etc?

Not lately.

[BFMF]

I would uninstall the drivers clean.. then shut down unplug and open the tower.. remove and reseat the card.. (clean it while you have it out) then this time install the drivers IN Windows, reboot.. wait about 2 minutes then reboot again and set up the drivers

see what happens

No luck. I unistalled the drivers from the control panel and used driver sweep  to uninstall. I then removed the card from the computer, blew all the dust out, and re-installed it. I loaded windows, and it installed some drivers of it's own, and restarted the system. I then re-installed the nvidia drivers, restarted, and it's still not working right

[NickN]

are there any other 3D games this if failing in?

If you have the software 3D Mark 06.. run the benchmark test and see if it fails

If not and no other game shows this issue then I would have to start pointing to FSX.. and new scenery installed lately? DirectX is indeed updated?

If it fails in other games or 3DMark, then either a Windows system file or something in the hardware is out of sorts

[BFMF]

It's not just FSX. Any 3d program I run crashes the computer. Even windows is very unstable. Windows flicker, turn different colors, weird stuff happens, and it crashes randomly for no apparent reason

[NickN]

It's not just FSX. Any 3d program I run crashes the computer. Even windows is very unstable. Windows flicker, turn different colors, weird stuff happens, and it crashes randomly for no apparent reason

OK thats different

We are either into a defective video card (or overclocked too high) or memory, or in rare cases the motherboard and even a PSU can be possible

I would pull all but one stick of memory and retest.. if fails, swap it for another stick, .. if still fails then I would say the memory can be eliminated although you can run MEMTEST in DOS (5 complete passes which takes a few hours)

Past that its going to be tough to lock down without a spare video card to test the system or PSU

[BFMF]

Would you recommend me taking my computer to a PC Repair shop and have them troubleshoot it?

[NickN]

Would you recommend me taking my computer to a PC Repair shop and have them troubleshoot it?

If you have gone as far as you can without the support devices and cards they may have a repair shop and can't do it yourself..    then of course

[BFMF]

Well, I took it to a shop today, so we'll see what they find. Thanks for your help Nick...