Video Driver Seemingly Crashes and Can't Reset

Keboose

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Dec 18, 2013
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10,510
I've had my AMD HD7970 in my Windows 7x64 PC for about two months now, and I've had an issue where randomly the video drivers seem to crash and fail to recover. I have a video here, and I have a picture that shows that this glitch only happens on my primary monitor; if I unplug the primary one, the glitch moves to my smaller monitor, and goes right back to the big one when I plug it back in.

This happens RARELY (grand total of 5 times since I got the card,) but at random times, seemingly centered around when I play games. One time it happened when I minimized Civilization 4, and more recently happened after I quit out of Sleeping Dogs after having played for several hours. I made a little shortcut to restart the display adapters using the MS driver dev kit, but of the two times I tried it, the first time it didn't work, and the second time it gave me this.

I'm re-installing the latest video drivers right now to see if that fixes it, but is there anything else I can try?
 
Solution


Ahhh! You remind me of my Vengeance. Because problem is rare I can't easily suggest to remove one stick of RAM and continue using system with only one RAM at a time for some time. Repeat the same with second RAM. This is to clear if ram has anything to do with this issue.

If nothing really happens by using these steps then it may be related to GPU only. Also pl confirm since the installation of GPU, have you ever clean installed Windows?
 

Keboose

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Dec 18, 2013
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10,510

yes, several times (I've had issues with my solid state caching program.)

As for the RAM, as I said the problem seems to happen randomly, there is no guarantee that the problem will happen again if I load up Sleeping Dogs, I would have to use each stick individually for several weeks to be sure.

*Edit: also, I'm pretty sure the RAM is not the problem. I had these RAM sticks for several months before I got the card (I upgraded from an HD6950.)
 


Then we are left with GPU and upto some extent SSD. You can continue with as it is. Try using HDD for some time and see if problem happens if not then may be it is SSD else you may be considering changing GPU.
 

Keboose

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Dec 18, 2013
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10,510
Now that you mention it, since the last time I re-installed windows, I held off installing the SSD caching software until a few days ago. I hadn't seen any glitches on this version of Windows until yesterday, so it might be the cause of the problem.

I really hope that's not it though. I'm going to miss my 30 second boot times if I have to get rid of it.
 


Not necessarily you've to miss the 30 sec boot time. Btw why 30 sec? Why not less. Problem with every ssd is the life time or cycle time after which it is expected to come to an end. In future we may see this issue gone but for now we've to stick with it. You can change your SSD anytime you want. Or you can use some good software to secure erase the ssd and then install the Windows again.

Regards,
 

Keboose

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Dec 18, 2013
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10,510
Well, I say 30 seconds because I'm in a unique situation. My original hard drives are WD Green drives (two 1.5TB drives,) and green drives are notorious for not working well with anything but themselves. I couldn't use RAID software or caching software without the system becoming unbootable almost immediately. I bought a regular Seagate 3TB drive, and delegated the green drives to backup drives.

Except that Windows 7 won't natively install on any drive bigger than 2.2TB, so I had to format the 3TB drive to be GPT, then use the UEFI boot from my motherboard so that Windows would install. and AFTER I do all that, I find that the caching software that comes with my SSD doesn't work on GPT formatted disks!

I had to go and buy a 'universal' caching program called VeloSSD. It lets me cache any disk I want to my SSD, and aside from the possible driver shenanigans, it works great! The only downside is that, because it runs entirely within Windows, and doesn't do anything hardware related (you have to mount the SSD like a normal drive, then the software stores and edits one large file on it,) it only speeds up the computer AFTER I log in. It takes about 20 seconds for the OS to boot, then about 10 seconds after I log in, everything is ready to go.

I found an option in the caching software that might help: the cache was set to "write back," which, according to other websites, has a possibility of corrupting files, because everything is sent through the SSD before it goes to the hard drives. I set it to "Write through" instead, which is a bit slower than write back, but doesn't corrupt files (because every change is stored on the hard drive first.) I'm going to see if changing that option fixes anything.
 


My strategy is different. My boot drive/disk is SSD (Corsair series). My windows and softwares are installed on that SSD. Then I've 2TB WD Black Caviar and 2TB Seagate Barracuda (Soon replacing with 2TB WD Black Caviar). All my data, vids, songs, even games are on these drives.

I'm not really into RAID so no such configuration. Because I've 32GB RAM Kit. I'm using Asus RamDisk software to create high speed memory drive (thru software emulation) in addition with SSD. System speed is impressive.
 
Solution

Keboose

Honorable
Dec 18, 2013
23
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10,510
Yeah, under normal circumstances I would get rid of the green drives and just buy equally sized normal drives, but I'm too stripped for cash right now, so as long as this setup works, it's gonna stay, as much as it frustrates me.
 


Ok good luck dear.