† ballard Posted December 11, 2011 Report Share Posted December 11, 2011 To be honest I'm still not 100% sure what's wrong, but I have a pretty good idea as to what it may be. My graphics drivers keep crashing. It's making it so that I cannot get into windows normally. I'm currently typing this in safe mode. I uninstall everything nvidia related and windows boots up perfectly fine, but when I have the display drivers installed my screen goes black shortly after the welcome screen appears... then my computer restarts after waiting about 10 seconds or so. I go into safe mode and a window pops up stating that windows had a problem starting up and says that my computer blue screened even though I only saw a black screen. That doesn't help because if there was a blue screen I didn't get to see what it said, so I can't look up the problem.I was thinking that my graphics card was dying, but if that was the case wouldn't it be giving me problems in safe mode as well? I've tried 4 different drivers all with the same results of me not being able to get into windows unless I don't have any drivers installed at all. I've been messing with it for 2 and a half hours to no avail. There were a few successful boot ups, but shortly after I got into windows the screen kept going black and windows was saying "Display driver NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version XXX.XX stopped responding and has successfully recovered." repeatedly... causing my computer to reboot.I'm using Windows 7 64bit.Drivers I've tried: 270.61, 275.33, 280.26, 285.62... (I'm going to try the 290.36 beta drivers shortly though I doubt it will fix the problem.)Do you think that this is nvidia's fault, or do you think my card is bad?This card is new. I got it in october. It's been running perfectly fine up until now with the 285.62 drivers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZeroPenguins Posted December 11, 2011 Report Share Posted December 11, 2011 Nah probably something to do with your drivers, delete them all and try using Windows Update and install those drivers, they are a bit older but they should work. GPU don't just die out like that, unless you let it overheat too much. Use a program called driver cleaner.net, it seems to work pretty well in removing all traces of GPU drivers. All I can really think of is that there might be another driver that is conflicting or you did some unsafe levels of overclocks and the recovery thinks the safe level is a step down from the unsafe but it is still unsafe. I remember I overclocked my GPU and I had the same issue, Windows crashing and freezing.etc etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
† ballard Posted December 12, 2011 Author Report Share Posted December 12, 2011 I tried what you suggested, but unfortunately it didn't work. I switched over to onboard video. It's working well so far... I'd rather not use integrated graphics, but for now it looks like I have no choice. I've been reading about this same issue on several different forums. It seems that a lot of people are having this problem.My onboard video is an ati chip. Since my computer is running fine with the ati drivers I'm thinking that it's something that nvidia hasn't addressed yet. Hopefully they fix it soon. The beta drivers didn't work for me either. For safe measures I'm going to rma the card.I'm still up for any suggestions that anyone has to offer though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ameanberg Posted December 12, 2011 Report Share Posted December 12, 2011 I believe that there was one driver series that caused Nvidia GPUs to overheat due to a flaw in the fan speed controls and die. That might (unfortunately) might be what has happened.Do you have another computer you could try the GPU on? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
† ballard Posted December 12, 2011 Author Report Share Posted December 12, 2011 I believe that there was one driver series that caused Nvidia GPUs to overheat due to a flaw in the fan speed controls and die. That might (unfortunately) might be what has happened.Do you have another computer you could try the GPU on?I put the card in my sisters computer, but it didn't work at all. Her power supply definitely has enough juice to power the card. I'm in safe mode at the moment messing with settings. I'm using my gtx 480 right now without any drivers installed, and I'm able to get into windows like this fine. The card could have gotten damaged, but I'm not sure. I've been monitoring the temps and it's running relatively cool (around 29-34c)... I honestly think it's a bug in the drivers that nvidia hasn't fixed yet. I could always try updating my cards bios, but if it's a driver issue that probably wont solve anything.It is possible that the card is dying. I'll do some research on what you told me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZeroPenguins Posted December 12, 2011 Report Share Posted December 12, 2011 The 480 runs really hot, there could be a good chance that it is dying, but I believe that is not the case. It could be anything, even your PSU not giving out enough juice. PSU do die out slowly or sometimes relativity fast, could I ask what were you doing before it started to become faulty? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
† ballard Posted December 12, 2011 Author Report Share Posted December 12, 2011 could I ask what were you doing before it started to become faulty?I was watching random youtube videos, and the youtube video i was watching turned green. At that time my monitor went black for about 5 seconds. After the picture came back windows said that my display drivers stopped and successfully recovered. Ever since this morning I haven't been able to use my card with drivers installed. It could be possible that flash started this mess, but I'm probably wrong. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
† L4ugh Posted December 12, 2011 Report Share Posted December 12, 2011 You could try booting into a live linux distro. It won't solve the problem, but it could help you determine if it is a hardware problem or a windows/driver problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZeroPenguins Posted December 12, 2011 Report Share Posted December 12, 2011 I was watching random youtube videos, and the youtube video i was watching turned green. At that time my monitor went black for about 5 seconds. After the picture came back windows said that my display drivers stopped and successfully recovered. Ever since this morning I haven't been able to use my card with drivers installed. It could be possible that flash started this mess, but I'm probably wrong.Lol that's the funny thing, I know those symptoms, sounds exactly like a fail overclock. But since you didn't overclock my other conclusion is PSU problem. Not enough voltage/power going through to the GPU can cause those annoying driver crashes. Do you have any other PSU you can try to use? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
† ballard Posted December 12, 2011 Author Report Share Posted December 12, 2011 I have another power supply, but it's only 380 watts. I'm pretty sure it's not enough to power my system. I could still try it out though.Come to think of it my current 600w psu is the minimum that nvidia recommends for my card. That could potentially be a problem even though it's been running fine since early october when I built this computer. I haven't noticed anything bad while gaming or having it under heavy load. I shouldn't have kept it on 24/7 XD... I wont be doing that anymore.I could make a bootable flash drive for linux to test it out.I could try underclocking it some, or possibly even giving it a tiny bit more voltage to see if that helps at all. I read on a different forum that someone upped the voltage on their card and it fixed their problems.Edit: That didn't work... I was hoping it would have. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZeroPenguins Posted December 12, 2011 Report Share Posted December 12, 2011 My conclusion is the PSU, but I might be wrong, I know that cheap PSU are not are reliable and they tend to "degrade" over time. What brand of PSU do you have? Or who knows, it could be Windows, you could try reinstalling it. But it might be a waste of time if it didn't work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
† ballard Posted December 12, 2011 Author Report Share Posted December 12, 2011 I agree, it's definitely possible that it's the psu causing this. It's a more expensive coolmax... I know that they aren't the greatest brand around. I've read a lot of mixed opinions about them. This has been on the back of my mind this whole time, but I've been trying to ignore it.I've been trying to hold off on reinstalling windows for now since these ati drivers seem to be working fine. It could be a program that's conflicting with the nvidia drivers during start up. I'm not sure what though. I did a bare boot, but I still wasn't able to get into windows.At first I thought I found what was wrong. I had a gpu meter on my sidebar and I disabled it. It let me get into windows perfectly fine after that. As soon as I restarted my computer though it went back to black screening. I wonder what it was that allowed me to get into windows that time. It could just been a coincidence. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZeroPenguins Posted December 12, 2011 Report Share Posted December 12, 2011 Oh dear >.< I hate to spill this to you, but I did a little research on them and Coolmax are one of those company who put a 450W PSU and rate it 750W, and most of their PSU are terrible efficiency are not good and high noise level (not how loud, the other noise). Good chance that your PSU might be the cause, since it was working before, could I recommend removing out everything that you don't need (like extra HDD, DVD drive, USB stuff, case fan, etc etc) that could be sucking down power and try booting into Windows, but your PSU might of wearied out due to it working at full load if it was really a lower rated PSU than advertised. Also if you have a friend that has a bigger PSU you can always ask them to let you borrow it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
† ballard Posted December 12, 2011 Author Report Share Posted December 12, 2011 I had a bad feeling when I was buying it. I'll talk to one of my friends to see if they will let me use their psu to test it out. My 380w antec psu could probably out perform it in that case. I just hope that this cheapy power supply didn't damage my graphics card at all. I stripped down my computer as much as possible earlier, but unfortunately it had the same results. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZeroPenguins Posted December 12, 2011 Report Share Posted December 12, 2011 Alright, tell me hows it goes. There is a chance that it might of done some damage but lets just hope the PSU is the only thing that wearied out. You could test the PSU using a multimeter with the voltage, I think it might not be giving out enough voltage when under load, I believe the 480 uses 6-pin and an 8-pin power connector. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
† ballard Posted December 13, 2011 Author Report Share Posted December 13, 2011 I met up with a guy I know and tested my computer with the parts from his computer.First I wanted to see if my psu was bad, so I put my psu into his computer and it worked fine. He also has a gtx 480 with similar specs to my computer. Next I put his psu into my computer along with my 480 and it didn't work. Just to be sure that it was my 480 I put his 480 into my computer with my psu and it booted up fine. Finally, I put my 480 into his computer and it wouldn't boot.I'm not sure if it was my psu that killed my card, or if my card was just faulty. I'm going to rma the card and test the new one with my psu for a little while to see if the same thing happens. Either way I wont be buying anymore graphics cards from pny, or any more products from coolmax. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZeroPenguins Posted December 13, 2011 Report Share Posted December 13, 2011 Oh ok, guess I was wrong but still PSU from coolmax have bad noise and ripple, which is not good for your hardware. Also bad voltage regulators, which means if it was suppose to give out 12V solid even under load, it might drop below it. Anyway hope you can fix it, and a 480 must not of been cheap to get, sucks that it broke, I was hoping that it didn't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
† ballard Posted December 13, 2011 Author Report Share Posted December 13, 2011 I've decided to replace my psu just to be safe. It does suck that my graphics card died, but I am glad that it's still under warranty.Thank you for helping me trouble shoot my problem. I do believe that the psu was the cause of it though like you said.*Thread closed* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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