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"Display driver has stopped responding..."

Last response: in Graphics & Displays
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Hello forum, first post on this site, but been lurking for awhile. I come to you because I am unable to find a solution myself.

So, about a year ago I decided to upgrade my rig. I had been running an Intel Core 2 Duo (775 socket) cpu with a Powercolor Radeon HD 5770. Prior to this time I had no issues whatsoever. I chose to upgrade to the LGA 1155 socket line so I got a Gigabyte Z68 socket mobo. This meant new RAM, motherboard, and CPU. After upgrading I have had nothing but problems. When the system plays video games (sometimes graphics intense, sometimes not) I will have intermittent bouts of the screen going black, audio playing in the background. On alt-tabbing I would see the message "display driver has stopped responding and has successfully restarted" down on the task bar. It was annoying but not game breaking so I ignored it.

Then last month, for some reason the motherboard fried out. RMA'd it and they fixed it. Concerned that I may have a bad powersupply I bought a new one. Problem persists. Thinking that maybe the video card may have gone bad when I upgraded, I RMA'd it, still having problems and Powercolor says they tested it and found no problems so they shipped it back to me. So maybe it is the RAM. Went out and bought new Crucial 1600 RAM and stuck it in there. Still having problems. Removed old ram with new in. Still having problems.

So I figure hell with it I'll get a new video card, one of a different model so I got an EVGA Geforce 660 Superclocked. Still having problems. Keep in mind I have installed the most up to date drivers with both the Radeon and the Geforce (not at the same time), have reinstalled Windows 7 (64x) multiple times, and still I am having problems. I'm at my wit's end and need help!

I've bought a new heatsink for the CPU and according to CPUID's hardware monitor, CPU and GPU are always frosty when these issues happen, never above 60C for either so it is not appearing to be a cooling issue.

Motherboard: GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Superclocked 2048MB\Radeon HD 5770
CPU: Intel i5 2500K

I know a good bit about computers but I'm sure nothing compared to what you all know so please any advice will be appreciated. Since my problem is involving all these different things and I can't isolate one part that is giving me the problems I had no idea where to post this topic so sorry if it isn't in the right place.

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This probably won't help much, but I get the EXACT same problem when I overclock and it's undervolted. More often than not it's the GPU that needs more. So, since you've replaced your cards a couple times, maybe you aren't getting enough power to the GPU?

What's your wattage on the PSU?
What's your resolution? (might account for cards not keeping up)
Do you overclock?
Which driver sets do you have? I know GeForce's beta drivers (R310) have alleviated this problem for me.
Graphics card Expert

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Thanks for the replies, i8myhippo your idea about the voltage seems interesting, I'll play around with voltage settings as both cards came factory overclocked.

I've tried installing the latest updates with Windows Update. First time my mom (who barely knows what a computer is) interrupted the update which completely jacked everything up. One Win7 reinstall later things are back to square one. Tried updating again, went smooth. However after doing that none of my gaming programs would start with generic messages about this program did not open correctly with no additional information.

So this is the second time today I've had to reinstall Win7 to get anything to work. Planning on trying Windows Update one more time and hope last time was just a bizarre fluke.

And brianonymous I checked your link, but since I'm having these problems with a clean Windows install with no updates I'm not sure taht it will help but I'll keep my eyes open for any issues.

Thanks again for the help. If nothing else it is good to know that I'm not the only one who has had this issue.

Thing is though I originally had the problem with an AMD card. I switched to Nvidia to hopefully get rid of the issue, and when I switched I not only removed the AMD drivers, but I did a complete reinstall of Windows. And the problem was still going on. :( 

I just successfully updated Windows without anything breaking (yet). And that is one of the aggravating things about my problem, it is inconsistent. Stress tests on the GPU and CPU show stable results, but when playing games it may happen in 3 minutes or once in 3 days.

I've updated to SP1 and increased the voltage on my card just a tiny bit and I have not had any more issues, so I think that it was one of those two things that fixed the problem. Thanks for the feed back and help, it is a great feeling to know I have a stable system again!
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