Wow My computer is dieing.

[Bonemasher]

I've told some people that recently I've been getting lockups in TF2 and my event log is filled with "display driver not responding" during these times, and sometimes it results in a blue screen where I cant tell what it says.

Well today I had a bigger problem, I joined the Ex server and my game instantly froze when i joined, so I hit ctrl alt del, and the task manager screen came up with little black squares everywhere, then it froze for a while and when it finally came back, windows was having wierd graphical glitches all over the screen, and eventually it fr4oze agian forcing me to restart the computer, and now everythings fine and dandy.

My event log has like 50 entries all saying "Driver status 1" and the source is yukonw7, it says its an ethernet controller, have no idea if its related but its during the time of the incident.

I'm afraid to open tf2 or any other 3d game now.

Its late here so I cant do much, but tommorow I'm gonna get some compressed air and clean the crap out of it. Just wondering if anyone has any ideas of things I can do to save my comp, its actually not even that old.

I seriously hate computers, if I cant solve this in the next few days, the video card is history, because its the only thing I kept from my old comp that blue screened alot.

Took me a while to type all this and no probs, so it seems to only be 3d games that fuck it up, but somehow I think heat can be ruled out because I played yesterday for a combined total of like 6 hours or so, and today I didnt even get a minute into playing.

Quite frankly I'd love to take this video card out and ram it up Nvidias........... well yeah you get the picture.

[Bonemasher]

Update: Opened it up to give it a good dusting and there really wasnt much to dust, my keyboard has more dust on it. :( I guess dust can be cut as a reason.

[Bonemasher]

Update2: I was browsing the net and my comp just started showing wierd graphical errors, and the monitor shut off, so I opened it up to see if all the fans were going and to feel the temp, and it blue screened right then and there with the case off.

Browsing online I'm now running on the theory it could be my power supply, which would explain the ethernet errors sometimes, my comp might not be getting enough power.

The blue screen said something like "Unable to recover from driver timeout".
And after it restarted the graphical errors were in the bootup screen so I just shut the comp off.

Not sure, could use some suggestions.

[Bonemasher]

My video card is now dead. Dont know why but all of a sudden my computer boots up with wierd blue lines and strange ascii errors all over the screen. Windows tells me my video card is disabled because it "has a problem".

Everything online points to my video cards memory being fried. Guess its time to buy a new one. Can garuntee Nvidia wont be getting any of my money anytime soon. To hell with them.

[Cosmic_Shame]

hmmm, thats sucks buddy, seems like alot of people have been having problems with Nvidia, i neva have before except i have had a card die, but cuz its an EVGA card i have a lifetime warranty on that, so im not gonna lie thats a kick ass deal, which i dont know if ATI has.

But if ur getting a new card, ATI is the way to go, Freaky has spent hours convincing me and gave me several pie and line graphs to show it.

If Nvidia decides ever in the future to come out with new cards such as a DX11 card before 2011 and is as good as ATI's stuff i might think about it, otherwise im gonna make the switch.

Well hopefully u can use an onboard graphics or something until ya get a new card

[Bonemasher]

I dont know whats going on anymore, booted it up today and it seems.... fine. No blue lines anyways. This doesnt make any sense whatsoever.

Btw last ati card I had was a loooooong time ago, and it was pretty bad, you could see through walls in hl1. I hope the newer cards are better.

[Bonemasher]

Think I've found the prob it is heat, I was fiddling with a proggy to tell the temp of my various components, and today with it being so cold, my comp is like 25 degrees cooler in pretty much every component.

Still I dont know if its the video card overheating or just the whole thing. All I know is yesterday my gpu idled at 72 when doing nothing, and right now its like 53. And my cpu was around 57 or so yesterday and now its 41.

And guess what? Tf2 runs today, when the past few days it just bluescreened the moment i got into it.

Now comes the question, do I run out and buy a new case? Because the other day having the case wide open didnt cool it enough to not blue screen, so I think it needs more room inside, and possibly more fans. Not really sure.

[Freaky_Angelus]

Check for dust inside heat sink of the GPU...

Not just the fan, just around the corner where the air needs to flow past memory and gpu.. that clogs up pretty competent.

72 at idle.. I dont reach 72 at 100% with my new 5770.. my old, way hotter, 2900XT never went past 93 in OC mode and stress.. so.. 72 is way to hot for idle

[$uCkY-p|aYeR]

But another question is how long has the case been working before this problem.. What is causing the access heat now and didn't before. IT's all cleaned up and you checked all fans.. and there working.. Maybe one of the fans is stopping randomly. I don't really know for sure.. Just somethings to think about if you didn't already..

Maybe with the case wide open you could watch the temps and narrow it down to a specific thing.

Usually if CPU overheats it will just reboot.. AMD CPU's that is not sure on intel
This really look like GPU to me... but again I don't reall know.. Just make sure that you get the video card heatsink and fan cleaned out really good.

[Bonemasher]

I was doing tests for a while playing tf2 and not playing tf2 with the cover on and off, and having the case open is a 10 degree diference on the gpu, and like 7 or 8 with the cpu.

Seems to be running fine today with the cooler temp in my house.

My gpu is 60 while idling now (case off) which is apparently low for a 8800 GTX (my card), the recommended is 72 which is the exact temp I get with the cover on. It doesnt get very hot during use though.

Also I have a 1560 rpm fan on my cpu that blows onto my vid card too because of the way its set up, wondering if upgrading that to a 3000 rpm fan will make the diference that I need, although It will be loud lol.

The thing is my bios has an automatic fan control turned on, but it doesnt seem to do anything, my fan runs the same speed while idling and while playing a game, should I just turn this off? Will it run the full speed or like half speed all the time if I do.

Oh and I've had this case a while working fine with this whole set up for at least 6 or 7 monthes, but on the flip side tf2 has been locking up on and off for a long time, I just thought it was shitty coding from valve but now it blue screens after it so it may be related, also borderlands has a LOT of graphical problems on this machine, which I thought was an nvidia problem according to the net. I find it silly looking back now that all these problems usually came in bunches and never in the morning when its colder.

I was also reading it could be the power supply temperature, maybe it gets so hot that it stops supplying power which causes my video card to just fail. Its supposed to be 40 degrees but theres no way for me to check, but I do know the back feels warm while playing a game.

[Bonemasher]

I think im on to something here, read that if a psu overheats it may output half the power, which is no where near enough to run my pc.

[$uCkY-p|aYeR]

I do agree with you that PSU have been the cause of some blue screens. Also if it overheats it could make the case get hotter as well. No chance you have extra PSU around to test that probably..

[Bonemasher]

No I dont have one lying around that would support this comp. :(, if the cords were longer I'd try running the computer with the psu outside the case, but thats not gonna happen lol.

Might have to bite the bullet and buy a new one and hope its the prob.

[Bonemasher]

Im revisiting the video card might be fucked theory. I played tf2 with the case closed for quite some time, monitoring the heat levels GPU got to around 94 and the CPU got to 72, with no problems for a long time. I even opened it out to get a general feel of how warm it was in there. And then after a while of not playing, and just browsing the web, my monitor froze and then it blue screened saying it could not recover from a driver timeout.

I checked to see how warm the inside was just be the feel while it was rebooting, and it was no where near what it was like when I was playing tf2. During the reboot those blue lines reappeared all over the screen too.

Just for fun I started the computer up with the power disconnected from the video card and the sound the pc speaker made almost gave me a heart attack so I highly doubt now that its the power supply cutting off from the video card.

I'm at the end of my rope here, it can't be overheating, but then why does it take so long to blue screen if the video card is fucked, how could I have played tf2 for 4 hours with no problem only to have it blue screen while surfing the net.

This doesnt make any sense whatsoever.

[$uCkY-p|aYeR]

If the fan(thats if the Vid Card actually has a fan i am assuming it does) is intermittently shutting down it could cause it to get hot then be fine for awhile. Have you tried downloading and updating the driver to the vid card.. This wouldn't explain why it has problems on boot tho..

have you tried a search on google BoSD recover from a driver timeout as the search or something close.. IF I have time I will look it up..

[$uCkY-p|aYeR]

been doing some searching most suggest to reinstall drivers or go back to older set.... But nothing solid just suggestions.. What O/S are you using?

[DocBlock]

I would go ahead and contact EVGA, see if you can get an advance replacement card, where they ship you a new one before you ship the old one back. Many companies do this if you'll guarantee the new card with a credit card. They don't charge you unless you don't return the old card.

Even though your card sometimes runs fine, the card overheating is your core issue. I'm guessing that the fan stops sometimes, causing the card to overheat. That's just a guess though. EVGA may have other suggestions for you as well. But I'm willing to bet you can swap the card entirely. If you continue to have issues, you'll know for sure that it's not the card, and can stop waffling trying to decide which route to pursue.

[Bonemasher]

Updated the drivers just a few days ago before these problems got so bad, even tried rolling back the drivers to fix it, doesnt do anything. I've done so much googling over every problem I have thats its startign to hurt my head now all the "solutions" people have that dont do anything for anyone but them.

One site says its a vista/windows 7 problem, another says its an Nvidia problem, some say its ram, some say its the power supply. Its like searching the net for the symptoms of a cold, you'll find you have cancer, h1n1, and tuberculosous.

The fan doesnt shut off as far as I can hear, or feel, when it screws up I usually put my hand near it to feel, unless its going off for a fraction of a second and going right back to full power.

Doc, cant get a replacement for a 3 year old card, I didnt make it very clear but its old in the fact that my brother had it for a long while then I got it. Worked 100% for him, and slowely died for me.

Btw, just left the computer for an hour sitting on desktop and when I got back there was a "windows has rebooted from an error" message. It makes no sense to me anymore.

[$uCkY-p|aYeR]

Yea I didn't find anything concrete from googling just the drivers thing you already did.. Crazy wonder if you could update the bios even if its the same version maybe it will overright it and fix anything. Technically it all points to a bad card possibly so couldn't hurt.. I read in a evga forum that if you register with the forums with yoru serial number that the tech guy will send you a bios update..

http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=12492&mpage=1&print=true

But honestly I have no idea at all..

[Bonemasher]

I may have found the culprit, checking speedfan and under the +12V catagory my power supply is only giving out 6.34V. Someone suggested I get a multimeter to make 100% sure.

[$uCkY-p|aYeR]

yep, you figured it out for sure lol you actually thought that was the problem in the beginning.

[Bonemasher]

Arg bios reports 12V so it must be an error in the program

[$uCkY-p|aYeR]

use volt meter just in case tho..

[Bonemasher]

Prob solved, it was the video card, put a new one in and presto chango no problems. :) yay