Windows 10 crashes after installing NVIDIA driver

Hi

This is going to be a fairly long explanation of the issues that I am having but please stick with me as I am literally at my witts end trying to fix this problem.

First off computer specs

Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth FX990

Processor: AMD Zambezi Bulldozer

GPU: Have tried various Nvidia cards (see issue description below)

RAM: 32GB Ripjaw 1800 4x8GB

PSU 850W

HDD: 2x 1GB spindle WD drives

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Ok so when I first upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10 back in 2015 everything worked fine sometime latter I upgraded my GPU to an ASUS GeForce GTX 970 and still there were no issues everything worked fine.

I mainly use my rig for Fligh Simulation namely Microsoft Flight Simulator X and lockheed martin Prepar3d.

Sometime later I started experiencing issues where if there was no user input on the computer for about 15 mins the display would just completely freeze, the only way around this was a hard reboot. The situation then got progressively worse where I now could not even get to the login screen, would constantly have spinning dots which never progressed to the login screen, I left this for days and it never progressed past the spinning dots. I was able to get the machine to boot into safe mode by powering off during boot up a few times and then using the recovery console however none of the recovery options worked, Startup repair, system restore etc all came back with a message that Windows was not able to complete the operation.

I then had a theory that there was some kind of corruption on the HDD so ran CHKDSK /f/r, a number of errors were found and fixed and I think I was then able to get to the login screen in normal mode one time and then 10 mins later the display just went black with only the mouse cursor visable, rebooting after this just took me back to the spinning dots issue previously experienced.

I then suspected corrupt display card drivers so I used DDU to uninstall the Nvidia GTX 970 drivers and stop Windows 10 from downloading the drivers though Windows Update. The system would then boot fine in normal mode but with only the Windows default display driver, The moment I Installed the GTX 970 driver (I experimented with umpteen versions) the display would go funny during the driver install, sometimes go totally black with only the mouse visible and sometimes would just have weird garbage pixilated images on the screen.

I ran SFC /Scannow and was getting an error about Windows Resource protection when it got to about 65%. I was also getting errors running DISM which I was able to fix the DISM errors by running "dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth" however I was still not able to complete an SFC /scannow without the Windows Resource Protection error.

After a lot of research I found two folders on my C: Drive $Windows._BT and a $Windows._ws which I deleted. After deleting these I was then able to run an SFC /Scannow successfully without any errors. I was able to run the startup repair options from the recovery console and even able to install cumulative windows updates which had not worked since these issues began, but Still the spinning dots before login and crash during display driver installs continued.

I was able to also then do an in place upgrade after deleting the two folders above which I was not able to do before but Still the spinning dots before login and crash during display driver installs continued.

I then thought that the Asus GTX 970 card must have been faulty so to test it I removed the existing hard drive and installed a brand new hard drive and installed a fresh copy of Windows 10. I was surprised when everything worked 100% the GTX 970 drivers installed and I left it running for days with no issues so that ruled out the graphics card being faulty!

Next I put the old hard drive back in again getting the display issues but I then changed the GTX 970 graphics card with an Nvidia Quadro card, I was surprised that everything worked on the old hard drive without any issues with the Quadro card.

I was then convinced that it was the GTX 970 that was faulty so I took out the Quadro card and put in a brand new MSI Geforce GTX 1060 hoping that this would resolve the issues but alas I was getting exactly the same issues with the brand new GTX 1060 that I was getting with the GTX 970. Spinning dots before login screen, displays crashing while installing drivers etc. Why was the Quadro card working with no problems but any GeForce card both the 970 & the 1060 caused the issues described above?

I am now a month down the line with this working on it every night for hours. I know that I should probably just install a fresh copy of Windows 10 and be done with it as I know this will work however I really would like to get to the root cause of this issue and don't really want to have to reinstall all of my flight simulators and addons and re configure them again, a task which has take me years to get it how I want it.

Other things I have done to try and fix this.

Run multiple virus scans (nothing found)

Run a rootkit scan GMER, I get a potential issue when running this with the csrss.exe and also the machine will totally just switch off in the middle of the scan.

I have fixed a number of DCOM permission issues which were showing in the event log.


In conclusion there must be something wrong with my Windows 10 installation and specifically any GeForce Graphics cards/drivers as other Nvidia Quadro cards work fine.

Any help to try and resolve this would be wonderful and also let me have a good night sleep for once in about a month.


Thanks


Darryn

I have the same problem with Win10 Preview build.  All was fine until I went in the fast ring. I can even roll back and its fine.
I have no idea why it won't work. I'm going to buy a new card soon anyway, but this is driving me crazy. I have the 960.

Hi, did you solve the problem? I got exactly the same one! Im building new system and once Im trying to install video driver system crashes! I've been trying everything you can think of: tried different motherboards, video cards, memory, pus's but nothing helps! Reinstalled windows 10 using usb and then dvd - the problem persists. I know its definitely something wrong with windows 10, because the card works fine in windows 7 (I tried installing it in this system). I also installed my older radeon card and the drivers won't install too!

Hi

I did not find a silver bullet answer however after hours and hours of trying various things I concluded that there was some kind of corruption on my hard drive in my Windows 10 installation, doing a restore or re install on top did not fix the issue either. I was unable to pinpoint the exact root cause however replacing the hard drive and completely reinstalling Windows 10 fresh did the trick and I have not had any further issues yet (touch wood).

I know it is not the answer you were hoping for and I was also disappointed that I was not able to resolve this in an easier way but after weeks of messing around I had come to the end of trying to find a software fix.

Thanks for the prompt answer. You know, i tried to replace everything but my SSD, will try it now. Thanks again, I'll report back later.