Video driver failure? Complete failure!

P4raDoXx · Mar 22, 2009, 12:12 AM

im not sure if this is the right forum to post this, feel free to move it if you need to.

ive been running nvidia's 182.06 (i think... not positive) for about a week, and have been playing empire:total war for about the same time. now thats a very graphically intensive game, and my computer was randomly just shutting down/restarting about every 4-6 hours of playing. Once i got an error message "you have run out of video memory" so i blamed the shutdowns on that. this went for about a week

last night my computer was off. when i turned it back on, by boot screen was covered with red lines, and some letters were "shattered." i selected "start windows normally", and after the loading bar (green lines this time, general video corruption the entire time) i got a BSOD. its only on for 3-4 seconds, but generally i think it said "your video drivers are corrupted, your computer will now shut down to save data. reset your video drivers". so i started it up in safe mode, and downloaded the new nvidia drivers (182.08?) but i discovered i cannot install anything in safe mode. i looked around for hours to find a way, and tried out some that required me to put some additional entrys into my regestrys. but nothing worked. so i restarted, booted in safe mode, and did a system restore. now i realize that system restore requires a normal boot to work, which doesnt happen on my computer, cuz i get a BSOD.

now the stupid thing is that my computer wont even boot in safe mode. every since i initiated the system restore, every time i try to boot i get a black screen (with random red lines all over) and a mouse cursor. ive left it for 8 hours and it does nothing

i tried to plug my system drive (with vista and all my drivers) into this computer and boot off it. i was intending to install the new drivers or uninstall the old ones, because this computer wont use the corrupted ones because it doesnt have the graphics card i have on my broken pc. well it doesnt work, it just shuts down after the loading bar.

heres my specs

Core 2 Quad @ 2.40GHZ
2gig of DDR2 800MHZ ram
EVGA nVidia 8800GTX ultra
EVGA 680i mobo
windows vista home premium.

i think ill have to take it into a shop, cuz i just cant access anything cuz it wont boot, but if you guys have any ideas please help.

i believe this was actually a bug in nvidias drivers... i heard some stuff about it, and a couple of my friends were having weird problems. i dont know, it might be totally unique to me.

EDIT: got my specs wrong lol

Mac Daddy · Mar 22, 2009, 02:38 AM

Sounds to me like your viddy card went for a shit

If you get BSOD's on reboot you can always try to clear CMOS. You can't boot to safe mode or any other OS dependent operative until your system can boot to the OS initially.

Hope this helps

P4raDoXx · Mar 22, 2009, 05:05 AM

well i have an unconditional 2 year replacement warrenty with my retailer, so if that card did go to shit, it will prolly be easier to replace it then to fix the problem lol

clear CMOS? how do i do that?

Tyrsonswood · Mar 22, 2009, 11:43 AM

Usually a jumper on the board, it's near the battery many times. But this sounds more like a bad video card than a scrambled cmos

Mac Daddy · Mar 22, 2009, 11:51 AM

I agree but worth a shot ... good it's under warranty

Al_Vampyre · Mar 22, 2009, 12:11 PM

Reseat video card and clear the CMOS as suggested, it sounds very like a heat problem to me, whats the case ventilation like?

P4raDoXx · Mar 22, 2009, 09:16 PM

well i have been running this card heavy for over a year... its an antec P182, with stock fans (so thats 3 120mm) running at low. ive never really noticed any heat problems...

that would really suck if it exploded.... i dont see why though, its been good to me through crysis, oblivion, company of heroes... i wonder why empire total war would've killed it.

could someone walk me through resetting CMOS? i have a eVga 680i. i would appreciate it.

Al_Vampyre · Mar 22, 2009, 10:26 PM

You still got the motherboard manual? If not you can get it here. On the board layout diagram there will be a CMOS jumper, usually it takes the form of 3 pins with a jumper over 2 of them, to clear the CMOS you need to move the jumper to the next position. i.e If the jumper is on pins 1 and 2 then move it to pins 2 and 3 for about 30 seconds then put it back where it was, this will reset the bios to all defaults, so you'll have to reset the clock to the correct time and reenter your overclock if you have one.

P4raDoXx · Mar 23, 2009, 04:27 AM

well that was awesome
i tried to move that little 4mm x 1mm square of plastic with everything still in the case and pretty much no light....

so yeah i lost it. im taking it into the shop tomorrow, they'll test the card and get me a new jumper lol

ill report back with the findings

Al_Vampyre · Mar 23, 2009, 09:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by P4raDoXx

well that was awesome
i tried to move that little 4mm x 1mm square of plastic with everything still in the case and pretty much no light....

so yeah i lost it. im taking it into the shop tomorrow, they'll test the card and get me a new jumper lol

ill report back with the findings

Lol mate; sorry, but that was funny...hope the shop sorts it for you!

Mac Daddy · Mar 23, 2009, 11:36 AM

Sh*t happens as they say best of luck and keep us posted

P4raDoXx · Mar 24, 2009, 01:50 AM

well, to quote my wonderful technician:

"yeah... its dead. like, dead. i only managed to boot it to desktop once, and it got artifacts even at the bios screen. its definitely dead. so yeah, im glad you enjoyed your time with it cuz its off to the little video card home in the sky"

so they gave me a BFG GTX 260 OCX as a replacement (for free). they almost gave me an overclocked 250, because the specs were closest and its the newest card in that range, but after some haggling (ish) i got the 260, which i believe is a slight upgrade on my old card.

i havent installed it yet (ill report back after that) but im really quite pleased with the service they gave me. memory express in edmonton, great place.

and the awesome thing is this card is still covered under the same warrenty with has almost a year still on it. so i can replace this too if it breaks in that timeframe

EDIT: oh yes, and they gave me a jumper but werent allowed to install it for legal reasons... im not quite sure if i put it in right because i think there is a typo in the manual... ill get back with that too :-)

P4raDoXx · Mar 24, 2009, 04:04 AM

umm ok...

remember how i said before, after the loading bar, i just got a black screen with a cursor? well i thought that was part of the same problem as the busted gpx card... but its still going on. it must have started after i initiated a system restore

it hangs on a black screen with a cursor right after the vista loading bar. if i leave it the default screensaver comes up, and when i move the mouse i catch a momentary glimpse of some white words on the top of the screen. it does his in safe mode too

if i hit shift the stickykeys dialouge box comes up, but ctrl-alt-delete doesnt work, or any other command like that.

ive been looking around and apparently this is a common problem... most people just keep restarting and it just works eventually, the most common fix is starting safe mode with cmd, and that would theoretically open a cmd on the black screen, where you open msconfig and disable all startup processes. but no cmd comes up for me

*sigh*

EDIT: GOT IT WORKING. inserted my vista disk and did a system restore from it.... and now windows is asking me to select a program to open an ".exe file" with... oh my.

Cow_160483 · Mar 24, 2009, 06:49 AM

may i suggest you back up all your important documents on an external and do a fresh install of vista and see if that fixes things ??

Ps: i personally find that restoring the system doent always work and sometimes dosen't help ... just an observation

Mac Daddy · Mar 24, 2009, 11:21 AM

First off cool on the GTX260 should be a nice card for ya

On the OS issues I tend to agree with Cow from experience I find system restores and repairs of installations always have small issues afterwards.

Your call !!

Al_Vampyre · Mar 24, 2009, 06:40 PM

I'm going to agree with Cow and MacDaddy on this one, restores and/or upgrades are usually just asking for trouble. Backup anything you need to from your system drive to the Seagate and re-install. You can use a Linux Live CD to access the drives to back stuff up if you need to - good luck, and nice job with the 260!

P4raDoXx · Mar 26, 2009, 01:53 AM

everything is working splended now

thanks guys for all the help

Mac Daddy · Mar 26, 2009, 01:55 AM

Most welcome and keep us posted if you have further issues

Mar 22, 2009, 12:12 AM	#1
P4raDoXx DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Edmonton, AB, Canada Posts: 65 Rep Power: 0	Video driver failure? Complete failure! im not sure if this is the right forum to post this, feel free to move it if you need to. ive been running nvidia's 182.06 (i think... not positive) for about a week, and have been playing empire:total war for about the same time. now thats a very graphically intensive game, and my computer was randomly just shutting down/restarting about every 4-6 hours of playing. Once i got an error message "you have run out of video memory" so i blamed the shutdowns on that. this went for about a week last night my computer was off. when i turned it back on, by boot screen was covered with red lines, and some letters were "shattered." i selected "start windows normally", and after the loading bar (green lines this time, general video corruption the entire time) i got a BSOD. its only on for 3-4 seconds, but generally i think it said "your video drivers are corrupted, your computer will now shut down to save data. reset your video drivers". so i started it up in safe mode, and downloaded the new nvidia drivers (182.08?) but i discovered i cannot install anything in safe mode. i looked around for hours to find a way, and tried out some that required me to put some additional entrys into my regestrys. but nothing worked. so i restarted, booted in safe mode, and did a system restore. now i realize that system restore requires a normal boot to work, which doesnt happen on my computer, cuz i get a BSOD. now the stupid thing is that my computer wont even boot in safe mode. every since i initiated the system restore, every time i try to boot i get a black screen (with random red lines all over) and a mouse cursor. ive left it for 8 hours and it does nothing i tried to plug my system drive (with vista and all my drivers) into this computer and boot off it. i was intending to install the new drivers or uninstall the old ones, because this computer wont use the corrupted ones because it doesnt have the graphics card i have on my broken pc. well it doesnt work, it just shuts down after the loading bar. heres my specs Core 2 Quad @ 2.40GHZ 2gig of DDR2 800MHZ ram EVGA nVidia 8800GTX ultra EVGA 680i mobo windows vista home premium. i think ill have to take it into a shop, cuz i just cant access anything cuz it wont boot, but if you guys have any ideas please help. i believe this was actually a bug in nvidias drivers... i heard some stuff about it, and a couple of my friends were having weird problems. i dont know, it might be totally unique to me. EDIT: got my specs wrong lol __________________ P4RADOXX: Intel Core Quad Q6600 @ 2.40Ghz \| BFG nVidia GTX 260 OCX \| eVGA nVidia nForce 680i \| 2GB DDR2 800Mhz Mushkin XP2 \| 80GB Seagate 7800.10 (System Drive) \| 500GB Seagate 7800.10 (Storage Drive) \| PC Power and Cooling 600 \| Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer \| Antec P-182 SE \| Windows Vista Home Premium (x64) \| Acer AL2223W 22" Widescreen \| Logitech G9 Mouse \| Logitech G15 Keyboard PCMARK06: 10,035

Mar 22, 2009, 02:38 AM	#2
Mac Daddy DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Ontario, Canada Posts: 7,950 Rep Power: 79 System Specs	Re: Video driver failure? Complete failure! Sounds to me like your viddy card went for a shit If you get BSOD's on reboot you can always try to clear CMOS. You can't boot to safe mode or any other OS dependent operative until your system can boot to the OS initially. Hope this helps __________________ "My mom said the only reason men are alive is for lawn care and vehicle maintenance." - Tim Allen

Mar 22, 2009, 05:05 AM	Thread Starter #3
P4raDoXx DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Edmonton, AB, Canada Posts: 65 Rep Power: 0	Re: Video driver failure? Complete failure! well i have an unconditional 2 year replacement warrenty with my retailer, so if that card did go to shit, it will prolly be easier to replace it then to fix the problem lol clear CMOS? how do i do that? __________________ P4RADOXX: Intel Core Quad Q6600 @ 2.40Ghz \| BFG nVidia GTX 260 OCX \| eVGA nVidia nForce 680i \| 2GB DDR2 800Mhz Mushkin XP2 \| 80GB Seagate 7800.10 (System Drive) \| 500GB Seagate 7800.10 (Storage Drive) \| PC Power and Cooling 600 \| Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer \| Antec P-182 SE \| Windows Vista Home Premium (x64) \| Acer AL2223W 22" Widescreen \| Logitech G9 Mouse \| Logitech G15 Keyboard PCMARK06: 10,035

Mar 22, 2009, 11:51 AM	#5
Mac Daddy DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Ontario, Canada Posts: 7,950 Rep Power: 79 System Specs	Re: Video driver failure? Complete failure! I agree but worth a shot ... good it's under warranty __________________ "My mom said the only reason men are alive is for lawn care and vehicle maintenance." - Tim Allen

Mar 22, 2009, 12:11 PM	#6
Al_Vampyre HardwareHeaven Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Scotland Posts: 1,532 Rep Power: 72 System Specs	Re: Video driver failure? Complete failure! Reseat video card and clear the CMOS as suggested, it sounds very like a heat problem to me, whats the case ventilation like? __________________ "Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad" - Brian O'Driscoll - Ireland Rugby Team 2009 Grand Slam winning Captain.

Mar 22, 2009, 09:16 PM	Thread Starter #7
P4raDoXx DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Edmonton, AB, Canada Posts: 65 Rep Power: 0	Re: Video driver failure? Complete failure! well i have been running this card heavy for over a year... its an antec P182, with stock fans (so thats 3 120mm) running at low. ive never really noticed any heat problems... that would really suck if it exploded.... i dont see why though, its been good to me through crysis, oblivion, company of heroes... i wonder why empire total war would've killed it. could someone walk me through resetting CMOS? i have a eVga 680i. i would appreciate it. __________________ P4RADOXX: Intel Core Quad Q6600 @ 2.40Ghz \| BFG nVidia GTX 260 OCX \| eVGA nVidia nForce 680i \| 2GB DDR2 800Mhz Mushkin XP2 \| 80GB Seagate 7800.10 (System Drive) \| 500GB Seagate 7800.10 (Storage Drive) \| PC Power and Cooling 600 \| Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer \| Antec P-182 SE \| Windows Vista Home Premium (x64) \| Acer AL2223W 22" Widescreen \| Logitech G9 Mouse \| Logitech G15 Keyboard PCMARK06: 10,035

Mar 22, 2009, 10:26 PM	#8
Al_Vampyre HardwareHeaven Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Scotland Posts: 1,532 Rep Power: 72 System Specs	Re: Video driver failure? Complete failure! You still got the motherboard manual? If not you can get it here. On the board layout diagram there will be a CMOS jumper, usually it takes the form of 3 pins with a jumper over 2 of them, to clear the CMOS you need to move the jumper to the next position. i.e If the jumper is on pins 1 and 2 then move it to pins 2 and 3 for about 30 seconds then put it back where it was, this will reset the bios to all defaults, so you'll have to reset the clock to the correct time and reenter your overclock if you have one. __________________ "Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad" - Brian O'Driscoll - Ireland Rugby Team 2009 Grand Slam winning Captain.

Mar 23, 2009, 04:27 AM	Thread Starter #9
P4raDoXx DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Edmonton, AB, Canada Posts: 65 Rep Power: 0	Re: Video driver failure? Complete failure! well that was awesome i tried to move that little 4mm x 1mm square of plastic with everything still in the case and pretty much no light.... so yeah i lost it. im taking it into the shop tomorrow, they'll test the card and get me a new jumper lol ill report back with the findings __________________ P4RADOXX: Intel Core Quad Q6600 @ 2.40Ghz \| BFG nVidia GTX 260 OCX \| eVGA nVidia nForce 680i \| 2GB DDR2 800Mhz Mushkin XP2 \| 80GB Seagate 7800.10 (System Drive) \| 500GB Seagate 7800.10 (Storage Drive) \| PC Power and Cooling 600 \| Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer \| Antec P-182 SE \| Windows Vista Home Premium (x64) \| Acer AL2223W 22" Widescreen \| Logitech G9 Mouse \| Logitech G15 Keyboard PCMARK06: 10,035

Mar 23, 2009, 11:36 AM	#11
Mac Daddy DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Ontario, Canada Posts: 7,950 Rep Power: 79 System Specs	Re: Video driver failure? Complete failure! Sh*t happens as they say best of luck and keep us posted __________________ "My mom said the only reason men are alive is for lawn care and vehicle maintenance." - Tim Allen

Mar 24, 2009, 01:50 AM	Thread Starter #12
P4raDoXx DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Edmonton, AB, Canada Posts: 65 Rep Power: 0	Re: Video driver failure? Complete failure! well, to quote my wonderful technician: "yeah... its dead. like, dead. i only managed to boot it to desktop once, and it got artifacts even at the bios screen. its definitely dead. so yeah, im glad you enjoyed your time with it cuz its off to the little video card home in the sky" so they gave me a BFG GTX 260 OCX as a replacement (for free). they almost gave me an overclocked 250, because the specs were closest and its the newest card in that range, but after some haggling (ish) i got the 260, which i believe is a slight upgrade on my old card. i havent installed it yet (ill report back after that) but im really quite pleased with the service they gave me. memory express in edmonton, great place. and the awesome thing is this card is still covered under the same warrenty with has almost a year still on it. so i can replace this too if it breaks in that timeframe EDIT: oh yes, and they gave me a jumper but werent allowed to install it for legal reasons... im not quite sure if i put it in right because i think there is a typo in the manual... ill get back with that too :-) __________________ P4RADOXX: Intel Core Quad Q6600 @ 2.40Ghz \| BFG nVidia GTX 260 OCX \| eVGA nVidia nForce 680i \| 2GB DDR2 800Mhz Mushkin XP2 \| 80GB Seagate 7800.10 (System Drive) \| 500GB Seagate 7800.10 (Storage Drive) \| PC Power and Cooling 600 \| Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer \| Antec P-182 SE \| Windows Vista Home Premium (x64) \| Acer AL2223W 22" Widescreen \| Logitech G9 Mouse \| Logitech G15 Keyboard PCMARK06: 10,035

Mar 24, 2009, 04:04 AM	Thread Starter #13
P4raDoXx DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Edmonton, AB, Canada Posts: 65 Rep Power: 0	Re: Video driver failure? Complete failure! umm ok... remember how i said before, after the loading bar, i just got a black screen with a cursor? well i thought that was part of the same problem as the busted gpx card... but its still going on. it must have started after i initiated a system restore it hangs on a black screen with a cursor right after the vista loading bar. if i leave it the default screensaver comes up, and when i move the mouse i catch a momentary glimpse of some white words on the top of the screen. it does his in safe mode too if i hit shift the stickykeys dialouge box comes up, but ctrl-alt-delete doesnt work, or any other command like that. ive been looking around and apparently this is a common problem... most people just keep restarting and it just works eventually, the most common fix is starting safe mode with cmd, and that would theoretically open a cmd on the black screen, where you open msconfig and disable all startup processes. but no cmd comes up for me sigh EDIT: GOT IT WORKING. inserted my vista disk and did a system restore from it.... and now windows is asking me to select a program to open an ".exe file" with... oh my. __________________ P4RADOXX: Intel Core Quad Q6600 @ 2.40Ghz \| BFG nVidia GTX 260 OCX \| eVGA nVidia nForce 680i \| 2GB DDR2 800Mhz Mushkin XP2 \| 80GB Seagate 7800.10 (System Drive) \| 500GB Seagate 7800.10 (Storage Drive) \| PC Power and Cooling 600 \| Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer \| Antec P-182 SE \| Windows Vista Home Premium (x64) \| Acer AL2223W 22" Widescreen \| Logitech G9 Mouse \| Logitech G15 Keyboard PCMARK06: 10,035 Last edited by P4raDoXx; Mar 24, 2009 at 05:02 AM.

Mar 24, 2009, 06:49 AM	#14
Cow_160483 HH's only cow moooooo... Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: BOTSWANA Posts: 6,817 Rep Power: 300 System Specs	Re: Video driver failure? Complete failure! may i suggest you back up all your important documents on an external and do a fresh install of vista and see if that fixes things ?? Ps: i personally find that restoring the system doent always work and sometimes dosen't help ... just an observation __________________ Decode! Muhahahahah!

Mar 24, 2009, 11:21 AM	#15
Mac Daddy DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Ontario, Canada Posts: 7,950 Rep Power: 79 System Specs	Re: Video driver failure? Complete failure! First off cool on the GTX260 should be a nice card for ya On the OS issues I tend to agree with Cow from experience I find system restores and repairs of installations always have small issues afterwards. Your call !! __________________ "My mom said the only reason men are alive is for lawn care and vehicle maintenance." - Tim Allen

Mar 24, 2009, 06:40 PM	#16
Al_Vampyre HardwareHeaven Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Scotland Posts: 1,532 Rep Power: 72 System Specs	Re: Video driver failure? Complete failure! I'm going to agree with Cow and MacDaddy on this one, restores and/or upgrades are usually just asking for trouble. Backup anything you need to from your system drive to the Seagate and re-install. You can use a Linux Live CD to access the drives to back stuff up if you need to - good luck, and nice job with the 260! __________________ "Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad" - Brian O'Driscoll - Ireland Rugby Team 2009 Grand Slam winning Captain.

Mar 26, 2009, 01:53 AM	Thread Starter #17
P4raDoXx DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Edmonton, AB, Canada Posts: 65 Rep Power: 0	Re: Video driver failure? Complete failure! everything is working splended now thanks guys for all the help __________________ P4RADOXX: Intel Core Quad Q6600 @ 2.40Ghz \| BFG nVidia GTX 260 OCX \| eVGA nVidia nForce 680i \| 2GB DDR2 800Mhz Mushkin XP2 \| 80GB Seagate 7800.10 (System Drive) \| 500GB Seagate 7800.10 (Storage Drive) \| PC Power and Cooling 600 \| Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer \| Antec P-182 SE \| Windows Vista Home Premium (x64) \| Acer AL2223W 22" Widescreen \| Logitech G9 Mouse \| Logitech G15 Keyboard PCMARK06: 10,035

Mar 26, 2009, 01:55 AM	#18
Mac Daddy DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Ontario, Canada Posts: 7,950 Rep Power: 79 System Specs	Re: Video driver failure? Complete failure! Most welcome and keep us posted if you have further issues __________________ "My mom said the only reason men are alive is for lawn care and vehicle maintenance." - Tim Allen