Help - Display Driver stopped Responding...?

[railven]

This has been driving me crazy for the last two days, rig spec's:

Intel E2160 OC'ed to 3.2GHZ + Zalman 9500
MSI Neo3 P45 FR (Version 1)
MSI Radeon HD 4850 T2D512 (Version 1) + Zalman VF900
Onboard Audio/LAN
2xSATA 80GB Maxtor (RAID 0)
SATA 160GB Maxtor
550W Antec TruPower EPS12 PSU (Single Rail PSU, I believe 36A off 12V)

I believe that is all the important stuff. Some history on my problem:

PC ran fine with Windows XP +SP2, CPU medium OC'ed to about 2.6ghz, GPU not OC'ed due to heating issues (launch 4850 before beefy HSF.) Picked up the Zalman coolers to address heating issues on GPU and to further OC CPU. System was stable with 3.2GHZ OC on CPU, but artifacting would appear at full throttle OC (set by Overdrive) on GPU, figured not to OC since GPU results were impressive.

One day during a session of World of Warcraft (in my opinion, not very graphically intense) the system rebooted. Got back into Windows and the system would not stay on, display driver would continuously stop responding and VPU recovery alerts would prompt. Tried everything I could at this point:
-clean install of drivers
-reduction of hardware on PSU (would happen even with just 2HDD+GPU+CPU on PSU)
-MemTest RAM passed flawlessly.
-dropped down to 1 stick, happened less frequently but would still happen.

The issue would happen sometimes the moment I got into the OS or my PC would work fine until I loaded up a game (or anything that seemed to require GPU power, like watching a DVD.) Eventually I formatted the PC, dropped down to one HDD and the problem seemed to have gone away.

Now, it's doing it again this time I'm running Windows 7 Beta. I had no issues with Beta 7 on this rig up until Friday night. I had a serious session of WoW that night, then boom PC rebooted and the things I mentioned above that happened previously started happening again. I'm about to reformat and reinstall, things I've done so far:

I noticed the last time I used that rig was on Monday (3/19) and I updated the display drivers to the ATI Windows 7 Beta drivers, also updated Windows 7. I didn't use the PC again until Friday and my WoW session went off fine untl close to the end of my session. Saturday I checked all my plugs to see if they were secure, but I didn't get much time to investigate due to a party I had to attend.

Today (3/29) I've gone ahead and tried:
-resitting the GPU
-clean install of drivers
-uninstalled all updates done on Monday (3/19)
-removed hardware to see if its a power issue
-returned all clock settings to stock (CPU)
-bought a brand new Visiontek Radeon HD4870 just to test it out (problem persisted.)

I'm starting to think its a Motherboard issue, but truly I'm running out of ideas. Everything POST, I can get into Windows 7, I can use Windows 7 randomly (some sessions it will "display driver stopped responding" instantly others it will be fine until I run a game.)

Any ideas how to trouble shoot this would be great.

 

[railven]

I tried ruling out the PSU by disconnecting everything except the essentials (CPU+MOBO+HDD+GPU) and it would still screw up.

Last night I reinstalled Windows 7 and off the bat same issues. After a few restarts, and having to go through the "create a user" setup its working solid again.

I was able to play Warhammer for about 2hours with no hiccups. Everything is hooked back up too (3XHDDs, GPU, Optical, yada yada yada.)

One thing I did try was switching the slots for the RAM, but it still messed up.

I'm still clueless as to whats going on.

If anyone has any ideas, please let me know.

 

[OT_D3s7r0Y]

okay so after reading your post, we both have conducted the proper troubleshooting techniques to find out wtf is causing this issue! Lets talk further about this, i want to push to get a very public and informative thread started!