Video Driver Failure (Nvidia 6600GT on Win7)

Hi All,


Yesterday my Desktop started playing up with a Video driver failure problem.

At first it was not so bad. The display would look strange for a few seconds and windows 7 would issue a message saying that the video driver had failed but that it had recovered.

It done this several times so I downloaded and installed the latest drivers and then shutdown. A few hours later I went back on the PC and it seemed OK at first, but again after a few minutes the same problem occurs except now it gets worse as sometimes the screen goes blank and the monitor receives no output from which I can not recover and have to force a hard shutdown.

After this happens several times I do a system restore to a few days ago, reboot and then do a full malware (spybot) and virus scan. I also remove the graphics card and give it a bit of a clean, check the connections etc. No problems are found and the system stays up for several hours no problem so I think it is OK.

But this morning the same thing happens again. It does not occur at the beginning but after a couple of hours then the same occurs again. I again update the drivers, but this does not help.

I thought it might be an overheating problem, but I run some SW to monitor the temps and when the problem occurs then the Core temps are not more than about 30 degrees, and the GPU temp is not more than 61 degrees, as far as I am aware these are within range (I have a 6600 Gt Nvidia card and a 6600 Intel dual core processor, my system is about 2.5 years old).

The information I get from the windows problem resolution center about the failure looks like the following;

Description
A problem with your video hardware caused Windows to stop working correctly.

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: LiveKernelEvent
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.768.3
Locale ID: 2057

Extra information about the problem
BCCode: 117
BCP1: 856DC008
BCP2: 934EFA30
BCP3: 00000000
BCP4: 00000000
OS Version: 6_1_7600
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 768_1
Bucket ID: 0x117_Tdr:2_IMAGE_nvlddmkm.sys
Server information: 139ec1d3-9548-4687-a407-daa5868b6aef



Any idea about what the problem could be?

Is it a SW problem or is the graphics card effectively dead? I don't want to buy a new graphics card if there is nothing wrong with it!

I am at my wits end as I don't know what to do to fix the problem, and I normally consider myself competent in dealing with error like this.

Any advice is appreciated. Thanks

Sorry, I made a typo. I have an 8800GT graphics card.

Now its even worse, I get no output at all. Not even during bootup! (Monitor and connections have been check with another PC and are working fine).

So I guess that it must be a HW problem with the card, so I need a new one right?

Thanks. Then I will order a new card.