Blue Screens of death, Nvidia driver, starting to think its the graphics card

[omin_of_deat]

I repeatedly have BSODs, due to nvlddmkm.sys or dxgmms1.sys, but all of my drivers are up to date, including my bios i'm pretty sure. I have an MSI GeForce GTX 670 PE 2GD5/OC version, which is the one there was an uproar about a few months ago because they changed how the card delivers voltage to some part? I cant remember, but is there any way I could tweak the clock settings on my card to get it to run more stable?

I mean like seriously, its usually like every few weeks, but i cant get past the first mission of Ace Combat: Assault Horizons with out it freezing and either BSoD or CTD and making me start from the beginning of the level. (on a related note, i was playing a few days earlier with windows live disabled, and i got a few levels further, but then it too bsod'd and because i didn't have windows live it didn't save anything, could this be related somehow?)

 

[trogdor8freebird]

Hi

You can try a few things here to solve the issue. I would recommend following these steps if you haven't done these already.

First though, I have to ask a question: Do the BSODs only occur on Ace Combat? I used to have a video card error that was fixed by replacing the video card, but my problem was only on Diablo 3, so you may not have to replace anything (I was planning on replacing my card anyway, just an observation).

Here are the steps I would follow (And check to see if the problems fixed after each step):

1) Uninstall Windows Live, then reinstall it.
2) Updating to the latest Nvidia driver (316.42 I think? Can't remember)
3) Rolling back to the latest official (Non-beta) update.
4) Download Ccleaner and clean the registry. http://www.piriform.com/download
5) Try this fix: http://voices.yahoo.com/techtips-nvidia-blue-screen-death-nvlddmkmsys-5316783.html?cat=72

If none of these work, then I would recommend trying out a friends' working video card (If you can).

 

[domzftw]

re install direct x also turn down memory on gpu. your gpu might be gettin old and tired.

 

[rwayne]

I placed this on another post. It may not be relevant to your particular case but hopefully it will provide some ideas which will yield results for you:

-------------

The very same problem has plagued me since March 29th and it has been driving me nuts. I have gone through a TON of troubleshooting too and had replaced a hard drive and a sound card. At times I even felt it was fixed then sadly found out an hour later that it was not. My PC is only 3 years old and I felt it was not old enough to be experiencing problems.

Well today I am confident I found the solution.

Below was the exact error I was receiving:

This would randomly occur in games normally a few minutes in. Just prior to it horrible loud static would come through the speakers. Sometimes it would not blue screen at all it would just reboot or go to a black screen and not recover. I have even had this happen watching YouTube.

What I did to fix: (some of these may not be relevant but it is what i did.)

1.) I found a post where someone reseated their CPU and stated there must have been dirt on the pins because it started working afterwards. I did not see that at all on mine or understand how that could practically happen but I did find that my CPU was stuck in the socket even though I had the lock bar released. After I got it to release with much work I reseated it. I think the weight of the heatsink may had jammed it in. I had had problems in the past with too much pressure on the CPU and it caused games to freeze up. So I reseated it and applied new thermal paste.

2.) I have four DIMMs. I took all of the ram out while I had the CPU heat sink off and make sure I had them paired in accordance with their serial #s so they were in their original sets.

3.) If you have a video card with dual DVI ports try the 2nd DVI port if you are using the first one and vice versa. My thoughts today that maybe one of them went bad or if I used the 2nd one the data flow would be different and it would be less prone to error.

From what I read STOP errors tend to be hardware related. I think my CPU just got wedged down or the 1st DVI port on my video card went bad.

Not sure which but it has been working great even after powering it off and rebooting.

One other note: Most of the help sites I have found refer to this as a Direct X problem or an AMD or Nvidia problem.

In my particular case it was not a software issue at all. I can state this because I bought a brand new Western Digital hard drive, did a fresh install of Windows 7, flashed the bios, then loaded the current version of Catalyst drivers from AMD. This did not fix anything. It just allowed me to run two rounds of a game before a crash. I have seen posts from both Nvidia and AMD users with this problem and therefore believe in many cases it is not a driver issue from either company.

When I shifted my focus from software to checking the hardware I already had I got results.

FYI - possible solution: if your power supply has multiple 6 pin PCI Express power connectors try using the other one / set. Or use an adapter on the molexs

Check all of your power cabling. Especially if you have a 4pin extension cable going to the motherboard's power port for the memory. Reseat it if it does not look secure.

If you only have 2 sticks of ram try seating them in the other set of DIMM slots.

Hope this helps. If not post a response. As I said I have been troubleshooting for nearly 2 months so I can tell you other things I did / tried. Highly frustrating issue. I have seen many of the sites which you have which did not lend much help.

 

[omin_of_deat]

What are your thoughts on getting the graphics card RMA'd? MSI suggested i plug it into another computer (one that does not have BSoD errors) and see if that computer has the problems too. also plug that video card into mine and see if it solves the problems. thoughts?

 

[smeezekitty]

I agree. That is a good way to test if you can.