Need help troubleshooting 8800 ultra

[Steele002]

So I have been running an Nvidia 8800 Ultra on Vista for about a year and it has worked fine aside from the occasional nvlddmkm.sys error. The error was occurring only with specific games and went away with a driver update.

Yesterday I ran into the error again while playing Mount & Blade which ended in a blue screen and now my graphics are totally messed up even when on the desktop. I have strange artifacts sometimes where the start menu should be or blue dots across the screen. When I open explorer, the window appears stretched and eventually it will loop the display driver error until a blue screen. I've read that this could be a video memory problem.

So far I:
- tested my system memory with the memory diagnostic tool and that passed.
- checked for heat. I don't have a thermal monitor for my video card but the case is blowing cold air. I also cleaned out any dust from the case.
- Removed all presence of the old drivers in safe mode and installed the latest

I was going to try underclocking the card but I can't have any application such as rivatuner up long enough to make a change before the display messes up.

Anyone have any suggestions as to what else I can do to figure out what the issue is? I really don't want to get a new card if it can be avoided.

Running:
EVGA NForce 680i motherboard
Vista SP1
8800 Ultra with factory defaults - Running 182.80 video drivers (which ever is the latest from Nvidia)
700 watt PS

 

[coozie7]

First check the fan is working, these cards will heat up very quickly if the fan is n`t turning, Rivatuner is good for this!
Try it in another system if you can, just remember it draws quite a bit of power and the test system needs to be able to supply it or you`ll have PSU related problems as well.

 

[Steele002]

Thanks. I checked the fan and it is running. Unfortunately the only other available system I have does not have a PCI e port. The problem appears to be getting worse so I guess I am screwed.

 

[pat mcgroin]

evga precision is a real good setup for monitoring temps and fps in games.
I allows overclocking and fan control and is simple to use.

One other thing which may or may not help.
Pull the card and rub the contacts with an eraser. That sometimes help if it is bad contact.

 

[Usermaatre]

My understanding is that this also happens with ATI cards and is a DX10 issue (obviously with a different driver name).

 

[frozenlead]

It blows cold air? Somehow I doubt that.

You can download a trial edition of Everest for free that will get you a GPU temp sensor.

Do the artifacts only happen in Windows? How bout if you load up a live CD of linux?
Try taking off the heatsink and giving the whole card a complete clean, and get some new thermal paste on there.

 

[legi0n]

I have this problem also.

the driver error only happened when i was playing certain games (RA3 mostly) to start with.
Then it started happening more and more on the desktop. Yesterday it started happening constantly and after booting up today I have weird yellow lines down my display. In device manager I have a code 43:

Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43).

I have the latest EVGA NVIDIA drivers for this card.

If I boot to an XP partition I can play games properly and never get the error. Obviously changing to XP isn't a long term solution.


Anybody fixed this?