I am in driver hell

B

buening

n00b
Joined
Feb 15, 2007
Messages
5
Not sure if this should be in the mobo or video card forum, but i am having serious problems with drivers on my new computer. I'm 99% positive it is the NVIDIA video card driver that is causing all of the problems. Please help me in any way possible, as not many other forums have been able to. First a little explanation of my problem.

A few months ago i put the computer together (see specs below) and installed everything except the Nvidia video driver 93.71 and it was working very smooth. It wouldn't run games too well without the driver, so i downloaded it from Nvidia's website and saved it to My Documents. Rebooted the computer into safe mode and installed the driver. Worked fine for a few days, and then the screen started blinking whenever any kind of load was put on the computer. It would blink like crazy and then BSOD and reboot. The BSOD was so quick that i couldn't even read what Stop Error it was giving me. So i attempted a System Restore and it kept telling me that i couldn't restore to the date i chose. I chose multiple dates and it still said the same thing, soooo throw out that option. Then i was advised from a few people to install Driver Cleaner and use it to make sure the driver is fully uninstalled before i try installing the driver again. Did that, and reinstalled the driver only to find the same thing happen. Frustrated, i chose to format and start again with a clean slate. Again everything went well until i downloaded and installed the Nvidia video driver. Now it's blinking like crazy when any kind of video or game is played, and BSODs and reboots. Sometimes upon the reboot it will continuously reboot itself and not even get to the boot screen. I can tell by looking at the monitor light going green, then yellow, then green. I can also hear the computer rebooting constantly. After that i have to turn the computer off manually and start it up. Upon startup, it sticks at the boot screen and says that the computer is in Safe Mode and that i need to adjust CPU or Memory settings. I have loaded defaults in the BIOS and the only thing changed is the voltage to my memory, which is 2.2V. I've even went as far as downloading the NGO modified Nvidia display drivers and even previous versions of the real Nvidia drivers. Same thing occurs with all video drivers. I also want to add in that upon booting into windows after the BSOD, i get a message saying "Windows has recovered from a serious error" and wants me to submit to them the error report. Upon doing so, i click close and it opens a website from Microsoft saying that a driver has caused an error in windows and it could not recover, causing it to reboot. I did run Prime95 for 30 some hours and there were no errors or warnings, so it passed that test. The computer is just sluggish when playing any kind of videos, and viewing the Task Manager when problems occur shows Explorer to fluctuate from roughly 50% to 0 and back to 50ish. Whenever it shoots to 50% the screen goes to flicker, so something is putting a load on it and causing it to flicker. I actually have installed the video drivers in windows before the anti-virus and any other program was installed and it still acted the same.

Has this ever happened to anyone, and is there any kind of solution? Is it indeed a driver problem or could my video card be dying? I have no other motherboard to test my video card or other stuff on. I have a similar thread on the EVGA motherboard forum, with no help except for another person having the same problem in Vista, whereas mine is in XP SP2. http://www.evga.com/community/messageboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=35425

Below are my specs.

EVGA 680i A1
e6600 Stock settings for now
Tuniq Tower
Jing Ting SB cooler
TT Extreme Spirit II NB cooler
BFG 7900GT OC
2x1GB Crucial Ballistix Tracer 1000Mhz (at 800Mhz right now, 2.2V per manufact. recom.)
NZXT Apollo case
Yate Loon 120mm fans (2 intake, 1 exhaust)
X-Finity 2G 600W PSU w/Noctua Fans
Windows XP SP2
 
the 7900gt's have had plenty of problems when they were at their peak. its a problem with the video cards memory not being able to take the speed that they are clocked at. they artifact in 3d games then usually drop you back to the desktop which blinks off and on until you hard reboot, i've been there and so have many many other people. its not the drivers, its the memory on the card, many more people can vouch for this. i've rma'ed a 7900gtx twice only to receive the same problems, EVGA finally made it right by sending me a 7950gx2. rma and pray that you get something different.
 
Update motherboard bios. Make sure all bios setting are ok. Re-install all drivers (mb+gpu), but only install necessary mb drivers, leave network, sound and so on out. Actually you may not need mb drivers at all. Then try gpu drivers. If they still malfunction and what you told is true, the GPU is most likely dead. If id reboots/freezes before loading the driver, it's a hardware conflict/malfunctioning.

Easiest way would be to try another GPU and try your gpu in some other system.
 
Early 680i's had issues with the serial ata controller that was fixed in later bios revisions.

You should update your bios from EVGA's site (it's an .exe that installs to a floppy disk) then update your bios, and then reinstall windows completely. The current latest bios is P28. When you start up your system, near the top you'll see a string of letters/numbers about 8 or 9 long. At the end of that string will be "P2x" where x is some number. That is indicative of your bios revision.

Why do this, you ask? Well if you have an older version that has this issue, anything you do/install goes through that serial ata controller and has a chance of being corrupted prior to being stored, or when it is being opened. This includes Windows files.

It may not fix your problem but you should definitely make sure you have at least P23 on there.
 
I would say it's his video card. I would RMA it if I were him.
 
Wow thanks for all of the help!! GPU Ex in the BIOS is turned off and it still does it. I've done about every combination of drivers possible, and yes the computer will boot without the motherboard drivers installed. I even tried not installing any driver except for the Nvidia driver and it still goes crazy.

So if it is the video card, why does it work normal until you install the Nvidia driver? Something about the driver that affects the memory enough to make it go crazy? I'll be contacting BFG for a warranty replacement. Thanks for the help!

Oh and i have the A1 revision board with P26, so no sata problems with this late of a bios. Planning on updating the BIOS to p28 soon since i'm having problems.
 
One other thing you might consider is dropping the voltage slightly on the memory and see what happens. I'm guessing that 2.2 will likely not be needed unless the memory is OC'ed. 1.8 is "reference spec" for DDR2.
 
Ah good point, considering i'm only running it at 800mhz CAS5 temporarily. I do know that i had reset the CMOS and i was getting a C1 error code and had to remove one of the sticks and up the voltage of the memory so i could use both sticks at 800mhz. I'll check it out, no since in overvolting when its not needed :)
 
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