Blue Screen then restarting

I've been dealing with random crashes and spontaneous reboots for a couple months.  It mostly crashed during COD (graphics intensive) but crashed rarely for Demigod (CPU intensive) and L4D2.  I was originally hoping it was a driver issue since i uninstalled the asus AI drivers due to crashing issues and running win7 RC.   It turned out it wasnt after a windows ultimate install.  I thought it could be a ram issue next so i ran memtest and prime95 without errors.  THen due to the nature of which games actually crashed i thought it was a video card problem next.  It turned out not to be so I replaced the power supply this evening and haven't had a crash yet. 

Set your bios to defaults then adjust memory timings, boot order etc. Ie. don't overclock.

So, based on your problem I would look at the ram and run memtest overnight see if you get errors, if not then try prime95.  Another good computer stressor is OCCT (just google it). Run through those. 

Keep in mind that your ram can pass all of the tests and still have issues.

Once your ram has been tested and cleared I would look at your power supply, see if you can swap it out with another.  If the crashes still continue do a Bios update, then try swapping your vid card.

PM me with any questions.  Good luck!

j

Will try this thanks for the reply.

It's most likely the video card, the GTX 280 and 8800 series of nvidia cards are slightly buggy, you will get a blue screen and the error will be in the nv_disp (I can't remember the spelling) driver.  Turn down the graphics options and it should make it go away, usually the driver/card crashes under heavy load because of heat, IMHO try to see what the heat on your graphics card is and maybe down clock it a bit if you know how to do that.

Did the mem test and all good, I didnt need to change the PSU or graphics cards I just installed Demigod on another machine with the following specs

Geforce 8800 (Same drivers as above)

2.4ghz core 2

1gb ram

Win XP

and I still get these crashes. 

Heat is around 60 and seems to be running cool, Ive had it running at around 70s on L4D2 and never crashed.

I have been getting some blue screens too lately, and I did some research because I suspected the Nividia graphics drivers. Turns out I was right.

More than 50% of users getting blue screens in games, have a defect driver. Either Nvidia has released a bad driver, (many people claim that), or simply the previous  uninstallation of the old driver wasnt done properly.

To test this, I did a proper uninstallation of the driver, and reinstalled it. There are certain programs, that are specifically meant to uninstall drivers. Not all drivers, but the most commonly used, like Nvidia, Ati, and Creative.

Anyway, I guess time will tell, because I didnt always get blue screens in demigod. Sometimes I would play 3 hours straight, and nothing would happen. And sometimes I would play 15-20 minutes, and then I would get the error.

@Widow_Maker: Configure your pc to NOT restart automatically when it gets a blue screen. That way, you can see what the problem is. I did it, and saw that it was a driver .dll file that was failing. This is Nvidia's driver problem, not hardware. That is, IF you have the same problem as me.

Edit: Do you ALWAYS get blue screens when playing Demigod?

Hi!

I had same problems. morpheas768 is right, it must be a driver problem and the restart isnt part of the problem, u can choose if u want a restart after BSOD or not.I found out sometimes the nvidia driver stops responding when u are playing Demigod, this cauises a fatal error message( i can see it in win7) after clicking "abort program" i will get the BSOD with error in nvlddmkm.dll. But if i'm starting task-manager and close the whole game, the fatal error message goes away without bluescreen and the driver restart responding(this works for me only under win7, all other OS get instantly BSOD). I think the heat is causing the problem. If i play demigod my gpu fan speed doesnt grow up automatically(dunno why) and after a while playing with intense graphics( 16xAF, 8QxAA all details maxed out) i maybe get the fatal error. But if i put the fan manually on 90 or 100% and play demigod, i wont get the fatal error. I think there are more errors with the 19x.xx drivers as with the 18x.xx drivers. But for now the 195.62 works good for me. I have a GTX 260.

Try it, hope this helps

Thanks for all the info guys, aye I always seem to get blue screens when playing. I think u are all right about the drivers as it has previously run fine. I guess I will just have to wait till Nvidia release a more stable driver.

For some reason a lot of my friends were also having issues with the vid card fan not scaling up.

They were able to fix this with evga's precision software which will allow you to set the fan speed manually.

(there are other similar programs out there as well)

http://www.evga.com/PRecision/

Good luck!

j

Also, try running OCCT's power supply stress test.  This test hammers your video card as well, watch the temp of the video card during the test...

I'm sorry jongalt but you are wrong here. An overheated videao card, doesnt result in a Blue Screen. Worst case scenario, is to see some artifacts and heavy gfx gliches, but thats it. Now in case that your card gets overheated so much that its way over the limit, then the pc will "hang" (frozen screen), and maybe some looping sounds etc. But not blue screen. This is not a hardware issue.

Besides, I already have Evga Precision installed, (I have an Evga card, so it came with it, in the box), and the fan is set at high rpm%.

My advice to Widow is: Check out the blue screen, to see which file is the problem. If it is a Nvidia driver file, then its the driver. But it could be something else too.

I may be Morpheas but I have seen dying vid cards blue screen after artifacting.  I've witnessed this occurance at work and when my old video card went out.  I have also seen them hang as well.  But anyways, that wasn't really my point. 

My point is that I have heard that the latest nvidia driver release is causing random freezes and BSODs and that people have had success in using evga's precision to ramp their fans up manually.  Since I haven't had this problem directly I can't accurately report on it but it wouldn't hurt to check it out.

j

Anyway, there is only 1 sure thing:

It is a driver problem, at least for me.

p.s. since uninstalling and installing the driver properly, I havent had an error in 3 days. still not sure if it is fixed though.

Well it certainly makes sense Morph!

Widow, do you have an update for us??

j

Report: Still no blue screens, even though I have played not only Demigod, but also run some heavy Stability tests for the Gfx card. Note that, I overclocked my card for these tests, to the maximum possible, in order to stress it as much as I can.

Still, the problem might appear when I least expect it. I am still not sure if it is fixed.

Reinstalled Drivers and still the same problem, thanks for trying to help guys.

I even lowered the graphics and still crashes.

Update report: After about 30 games, I had seen no blue screens at all. Today i wanted to watch a replay. 4 minutes watching the replay, and I got a blue screen. Restart tried again. I used 10x speed, to skip to 4 minutes mark, so that I resume where i left it. Same thing. Blue screen. Tried 3rd time, Blue screen. All blue screens are within 5 minutes of watching the replay, and everytime it is the same file: nv4_disp.dll

For some reason, it is hyper sensitive to replays.

Since I found a way to reproduce the blue screen, I will try reverting to an older driver, since this is clearly the problem. And since Nvidia doesnt bother to release a new driver, I have no other choice. If this doesnt work, I will revert to an even older one, if this doesnt work either, then...I am stuck with it.

Oh well, at least it happens only on replays...

Report from myself:

with 195.81 and setting the gpu-fan to 100% before playing, I'm still having no problems. I had a lot of Fatal error and BSOD's before with some other drivers or not putting the fan above manually. Now I can play online and watch replays with 16xAF 8xAA all details maxed out and good temps (under 60C). I have xfx gtx 260 black edition, so you can say its like a nice overclock on a normal gtx 260. If some of you still having problems it might be a porblem from your geforce manufacture. Or your having a lot of dust in your pc/fan(pls check this), or you need an additional fan on your pc case. This driver is 100% working with demigod.

I have a gtx 260 myself, and i had the 195.62 drivers.

Since reverting to the 191.07, I get no blue screens, everything seems fine.

I hope the problems are gone now.