Windows 7 Desktop artifacts/BSOD

M

MrBojangels

Gawd
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Jul 8, 2006
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I've been running W7 build 7100 on my laptop for about as long as it has been available, yesterday I installed Windows 7 retail disc and everything seemed fine. I run the updater, it installed my Nvidia drivers, I could finally enable aero so I did and I immediately noticed little artifacts all over the screen flickering, if I try to use any program at all it locks up within a minute and hard resets itself back to the bios screen. I've also had it tell me the Nvidia driver has stopped responding and restarted before as well, followed shortly by another crash. All of this is happening on an Asus N80 laptop with an Nvidia 9650m GT GPU and the 64bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate. Before completley deleting my partitions for this new install both W7 and Vista ran fine and played games like Left 4 Dead and WoW fine.
 
QwertyJuan said:
Def. sounds overclocked.... if it's not... sounds like a hardware issue.
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How could it possibly be a hardware issue when there are only problems in one OS install? I've had similar crazy shit happen with Ubuntu and my desktop because of drivers.
 
MrBojangels said:
How could it possibly be a hardware issue when there are only problems in one OS install? I've had similar crazy shit happen with Ubuntu and my desktop because of drivers.
Click to expand...

It sounds like when it enables Aero that the card is crapping out. This would be due to using the 3D effects. Try installing driver, don't enable Aero, and play a game. It will prolly do the same thing.
 
P.S. Try another driver... it IS possible that your card doesn't like the driver.
 
QwertyJuan said:
P.S. Try another driver... it IS possible that your card doesn't like the driver.
Click to expand...

I don't know which older driver to try, 9650m GT isn't exactly a common GPU and support for it isn't included in all drivers(at least it didn't use to be)
QwertyJuan said:
It sounds like when it enables Aero that the card is crapping out. This would be due to using the 3D effects. Try installing driver, don't enable Aero, and play a game. It will prolly do the same thing.
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Its also doing it with Aero off, however it doesn't do it when I don't install any drivers.
 
Installed older drivers, rebooted, defaults back to the Windows 7 drivers and acts like I never installed any.
 
MrBojangels said:
How could it possibly be a hardware issue when there are only problems in one OS install? I've had similar crazy shit happen with Ubuntu and my desktop because of drivers.
Click to expand...
One possible answer: Windows 7 relies on GPU memory much more than previous operating systems. Windows XP had programs drawing directly to the screen, which causes problems such as tearing with unresponsive apps. Vista introduced DWM to fix this, and had copies of windows in both main memory and GPU memory. Windows 7 relies much more on GPU memory, which cuts overall memory usage but may have issues if GPU drivers aren't 100% reliable with memory reads/writes.
 
Arainach said:
One possible answer: Windows 7 relies on GPU memory much more than previous operating systems. Windows XP had programs drawing directly to the screen, which causes problems such as tearing with unresponsive apps. Vista introduced DWM to fix this, and had copies of windows in both main memory and GPU memory. Windows 7 relies much more on GPU memory, which cuts overall memory usage but may have issues if GPU drivers aren't 100% reliable with memory reads/writes.
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I still think the issue would have arose in some way shape or form in the various games I've played(Fallout 3, Oblivion, Left 4 Dead, CS:S, Call of Duty 4, WoW, and various free 3D games)

edit: Also we're forgetting I ran the RC fine for months until I deleted it for RTM.
 
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This is definitely a driver problem, first of all my GPU starts out at 550mhz which my laptop would REFUSE to do unless it was plugged into an external power source(my GPU is supposed to be locked at 400/400 on battery, and go up to stock 550/400 on power). This however isn't the problem, my GPU keeps underclocking more and more from 550mhz all the way down to 169mhz and once it tries to go below 169mhz the nvidia driver crashes and shit hits the fan. I didn't start to see artifacting until it hit 169mhz, the whole time the GPU was only at about 44C.
 
Try getting a driver straight from Nvidia's website instead of Windows Update. WU is usually a few weeks/months old.
 
QwertyJuan said:
Who??
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I knew about this program, however I wanted to avoid this fix because I already lost about 30-40minutes of battery life going to W7(Asus power saving programs aren't compatible)but when you disable GPU throttling I'm going to have under 2hours of battery life.
 
i had issues with my GTX 260 and a 9600GT in another system, both x64 sual cores. this is what i did to fix the errors

uninstalled drivers installed by Windows durring installation (in Safe mode if need be - the GTX 260 i had to use Safe Mode to uninstall the 9600GT uninstall was accomplished in normal) check your Boot Partition for errors, "schedule disk check" and reboot
Re-Start in safe mode f8 after disk scan..could be anal of me, but i wanted to test the removal and after disk scan. once in Safe mode:
Start->cmd
sc delete nvsvc
sc delete nvlddmkm

rebooted normally and installed the 191.07 x64 and no more video issues.i also had issues with voltage on my RAM, had to up it +0.50v. this may be an issue on a laptop as i dont know what range of settings you may have or if this plays into your problem. all i can say is these two things solved my nVidia problems.

and losing some time on battery should not be a deal breaker if the system will not function.
 
The underclocking followed by crash can easily be because of a BIOS issue, or poorly seated heatsink. The GPU detects overheating, underclocks until it can't go any farther, keeps heating up, artifacts, crash.

Try updating your BIOS for now.
 
Tawnos said:
The underclocking followed by crash can easily be because of a BIOS issue, or poorly seated heatsink. The GPU detects overheating, underclocks until it can't go any farther, keeps heating up, artifacts, crash.

Try updating your BIOS for now.
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:rolleyes: 44C is far from overheating.
 
Graphical artifacts on screens used to be called "snow" which was an indication of overheating graphics card. Check and see if the fan on your card's working. If it's passively cooled, see if you can ventilate your case better (such as taking the side off).
 
Would people please read? This is a laptop, and the artifacting I get does not resemble snow in any way.
 
MrBojangels said:
Would people please read? This is a laptop, and the artifacting I get does not resemble snow in any way.
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I did read. Now if you would read tech news from time to time you'll know that there's been overheating issues cropping up here and there on laptops with nVidia graphics in it.

Granted, it's mostly Dell and HP laptops, but still.

Substitute the side panel advise with something else, such as a third party cooling panel for laptops.

You tried different version drivers, you probably tried to reinstall Win7. It won't hurt to try this.
 
ok so you still have a problem? you have not stated what you are doing, only that you DL'd drivers from nVidia and you are playing with clocks on the GPU.
did youupdate the BIOS? did you remove the MS supplied drivers? did you delete?

Start->cmd
sc delete nvsvc
sc delete nvlddmkm

then re-install the 191.07? appropriate to your flavor of Win 7?

the MS provided nVidia drivers are crap. does not matter if we are talking about a "M" version of the silicon or not, the files must be removed or you need to re-install your OS clean and not attempt to install the nVidia drivers from MS. at a certain point the removal and re-installation just mucks it all up more. so you may want to consider format and clean install, or at least wipe the windows install.
 
MrBojangels said:
I don't know which older driver to try, 9650m GT isn't exactly a common GPU and support for it isn't included in all drivers(at least it didn't use to be)


Its also doing it with Aero off, however it doesn't do it when I don't install any drivers.
Click to expand...

i had this issue on a dell laptop with vista and windows 7 one day it would just BSOD and crash, as soon as i installed the nvidia drive, if i left the stock windows drive in, no problems, turns out the vid card is dieing in it.
 
MrBojangels said:
I knew about this program, however I wanted to avoid this fix because I already lost about 30-40minutes of battery life going to W7(Asus power saving programs aren't compatible)but when you disable GPU throttling I'm going to have under 2hours of battery life.
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There is an option in the powermizer switch program to turn powermizer off when plugged in and leave it on when on battery. This way you won't lose battery life and you can do some testing, if you have problems with the lock ups and screen flickering on battery but not while plugged in then it is powermizer. if you still have issues while plugged in then its something else.
 
On both A/C and battery the laptop crashes when powermizer is on, it is just underclocking itself until it becomes unstable, when I disable powermizer it sits at 550/400 and 47C and is perfectly stable on battery and A/C, I've reinstalled W7, I have even tried the new beta drivers released today and I get the same issue. My GPU is not dieing, it is not overheating, its a driver problem where it underclocks the GPU too much.
 
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