[SOLVED] NVIDIA Display drivers keep crashing after 388.71 and rolling back hasn't helped

I installed the latest drivers (388.71) for my Gigabyte Xtreme Gaming GTX1080 Waterforce and most of my apps/games either won't start at all or randomly crash because of the NVIDIA display driver crashing. Each time a game crashes or install-crashes or when an application like Adobe Creative Cloud crashes I get the message pop up from my taskbar saying "NVIDIA DIsplay driver has stopped responding and has been recovered" but it is not recovered as I have to reboot my machine or the PC thinks there is no GPU installed.

I tried rolling back to 388.59 which worked fine before using DDU in safe mode to remove the 388.71 drivers first so I could do a true clean install of the older drivers, and the problems are persisting!

Programs crash left right and center because of the Nvidia Display driver! Every time a program or game crashes I get the message come up from my taskbar "Nvidia Display Driver stopped responding and was recovered" however it is not recovered and I have to reboot, to get the same issues again, and again and again. Screensavers won't work. Reshade won't work, most of my games crash at random intervals, Adobe Creative Cloud crashes, and it's all caused by the Nvidia Display Drivers crashing!

According to Event Viewer, the culprit is "nvd3dumx.dll", which is triggering an Access Violation (0xc00000005) error, and I also found under Event Viewer Event id #2 NVIDIA OpenGL Driver: "The NVIDIA OpenGL driver has not been able to initialize a connection with the GPU. This might be due to out of memory error, an exhaustion of system resources or too many graphical applications running. The application will not render correctly" Every program that gets crashed by the NVIDIA Display driver is also showing Access Violation (0xc00000005) errors too. half my machines programs are now rendered inoperable, and I rolled back the drivers so I am concerned I will have to reformat my C: drive, perform a clean reinstallation of Windows 7 Pro (x64) and spend the next few weeks reinstalling and setting up all of my applications and games. Something about installing the 388.71 drivers has permanently corrupted my installation of Windows 7, and that damage can't be repaired.

My GPU is even set at stock speeds with no overclocking (not even the factory OC) and this is still happening. Any assistance would be appreciated as this is rendering my PC almost inoperable.

System Specs:
Windows 7 Professional 64bit on Kingston HyperX Fury SSD (120Gb)
ASUS Z97-k Mobo
Corsair HX850i Platinum Grade 850w PSU
Intel i7-4790k in turbo mode 4.4Ghz
Corsair H115i Liquid CPU Cooler
32Gb Corsair Vengeance pro 2400 DDR3 RAM
XMP Overclocking set in BIOS
8Gb Gigabyte Xtreme Gaming GTX1080 OC PCIe Waterforce GFX Card
latest WHQL Nvidia Display Drivers
Sound Blaster Zx PCIe Sound Card
Logitech Z906 THX Certified 5.1 Surround Speakers and LFE
WD Gold Enterprise class 10Tb DataCenter 7,200RMP HDD
WD 4Tb internal HDD
WD Caviar 1.5Tb Internal HDD
WD Elements 1Tb External USB 3.0 HDD
WD Elements 3Tb External USB 3.0 HDD
ASUS VG278 27" 120Hz 3D Monitor with Nvidia 3D Vision 2 (TM)
AVerMedia Volar Green USB2.0 HDTV Tuner
Microsoft Xbox One S Controller connected via MicroUSB to avoid Win10 requirement
Logitech G710+ Mechanical Keyboard
Logitech G502 Proteus Core Gaming Mouse
ASUS PCE-AC68U AC1900 PCIe WiFi Card paired with:
ASUS RT-AC68U AC1900 Dual-Band Router on 5ghz band
Fractal Design XL-R2 Full Tower ATX Chassis