Graphics Card Driver Constantly Failing

G

Guitaristic

New Member
Hey all, so I built a new rig back in May and everything was great. Except for a couple minor Hard drive hiccups, things have been going smoothly. Yesterday I cut my pc on though and began instantly getting "graphics card driver has failed and recovered" messages a couple of times per minute. I wasn't even trying to do any big gaming, I was just opening up google chrome to check my Facebook lol.

I have been on the same driver for my card (GeForce 660 ti) since May and it has never given me any problems. Why is it going wonky now though? I checked task manager later in the day and noticed the CPU was constantly skyrocketing to 100% every couple seconds while I was trying to do menial tasks such as opening a browser. I updated my driver a few minutes ago in safe mode to the most current non-beta version, but it did not help. Still the same skyrocketing CPU %.

So now I'm thinking I have a virus. Started to run a Microsoft safety scanner quick scan in standard mode but screen began to cut to black and I was getting more driver fail error messages until the screen eventually stuck on black.

Obviously this is a very frustrating situation, and I'd be very appreciative of any help. I sunk a nice chunk of change into the rig (my first) and this is really starting to piss me off :(

Should I attempt scans in safe mode? Are they as effective as scans in standard mode or am I wasting my time?
 
johnb35

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
Update the video driver first and then go from there. Technically the driver is 7 months old and they usually update drivers once a month. What video card and what operating system are you running?
 
G

Guitaristic

New Member
johnb35 said:
Update the video driver first and then go from there. Technically the driver is 7 months old and they usually update drivers once a month. What video card and what operating system are you running?
Click to expand...

I've got an Nvidia GeForce 660 TI and Windows 7 64-bit. I updated the driver from 314.22 (my old one) to the newest WHQL one, 331.82, but it's still doing the same things. Any ideas?
 
johnb35

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
I would say your card is failing for some reason. However, you might want to try totally uninstall the video drivers and then reinstalling the lastest version.
 
G

Guitaristic

New Member
johnb35 said:
I would say your card is failing for some reason. However, you might want to try totally uninstall the video drivers and then reinstalling the lastest version.
Click to expand...

Ok I'll give that a go. So if it doesn't work you think I should just replace the card?
 
johnb35

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
You could try it in another computer first though. Do as much diagnosing as possible to rule things out.
 
G

Guitaristic

New Member
johnb35 said:
You could try it in another computer first though. Do as much diagnosing as possible to rule things out.
Click to expand...

I would but I don't have another computer that could handle it. Too big for the old one :D Well I tried completely removing and updating the driver but still no luck. Looks like I'll be shipping it off this week.

I'm kinda disappointed...never had problems with Nvidia before. This experience has definitely had a negative impact on the relationship though. Might jump ship to AMD. Would that be a bad move though since I don't have an AMD processor? Should I stick with Nvidia?
 
G

Guitaristic

New Member
Great. Just tried to cut pc back on and it evidently isn't even detecting my HD anymore. Says "missing operating system". This is a lovely turn of events. :(
 
johnb35

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
Make sure all power and data cables are securely attached to the hdd. It may also be possible that you were having an issue with the HDD. What brand of drive is it and how old is it?
 
G

Guitaristic

New Member
johnb35 said:
Make sure all power and data cables are securely attached to the hdd. It may also be possible that you were having an issue with the HDD. What brand of drive is it and how old is it?
Click to expand...

It's a Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200RPM. Not the best choice, but it seemed good at the time. It's about the same age as the graphics card. Got it back in late April or early May when I built the pc!

It had given me grief a couple times before where, instead of loading normally, it was like the computer didn't detect the HD and would tell me "Please insert boot disc". One or maybe two restarts and it was good to go. It only happened a couple times though! I've never had it do this before.

Do you think the problems are somehow connected or are the digital gods just angry at me? :p
 
Okedokey

Okedokey

Well-Known Member
Im suspecting an overheating or failing motherboard. Hard to tell now, however I would if you can ensure you have the latest motherboard bios, correct voltage and other settings. You can download the bios for your motherboard on another machine, put it on a USB, enter the BIOS, update the BIOS, restart, load default settings in the BIOS, restart again, then re-enter the BIOS and set your specifc settings including boot-priorty.
 
G

Guitaristic

New Member
Okedokey said:
Im suspecting an overheating or failing motherboard. Hard to tell now, however I would if you can ensure you have the latest motherboard bios, correct voltage and other settings. You can download the bios for your motherboard on another machine, put it on a USB, enter the BIOS, update the BIOS, restart, load default settings in the BIOS, restart again, then re-enter the BIOS and set your specifc settings including boot-priorty.
Click to expand...

That's quite a to-to list :D

Yeah I'm not good at all with messing around in a BIOS, but I can try that. Doesn't sound too hard.
 
G

Guitaristic

New Member
Sorry for the disappearance, was busy with college stuff :)

So I attempted to run Seatools on the machine but it was unable to even detect my hard drive, so I'm taking that as a bad sign. Think I'm gonna proceed with the BIOS directions below and then run Seatools again after. I'm super uncomfortable with messing around in the BIOS but I figure I'll be all right thanks to google!

Okedokey said:
Im suspecting an overheating or failing motherboard. Hard to tell now, however I would if you can ensure you have the latest motherboard bios, correct voltage and other settings. You can download the bios for your motherboard on another machine, put it on a USB, enter the BIOS, update the BIOS, restart, load default settings in the BIOS, restart again, then re-enter the BIOS and set your specifc settings including boot-priorty.
Click to expand...

Here goes nothing! :D
 
G

Guitaristic

New Member
Okedokey said:
Im suspecting an overheating or failing motherboard. Hard to tell now, however I would if you can ensure you have the latest motherboard bios, correct voltage and other settings. You can download the bios for your motherboard on another machine, put it on a USB, enter the BIOS, update the BIOS, restart, load default settings in the BIOS, restart again, then re-enter the BIOS and set your specifc settings including boot-priorty.
Click to expand...

Ok, I flashed the BIOS to the latest version and my computer is somewhat alive again :eek:

I tried to boot it up in standard mode, but it froze on the password screen, so now I'm currently running it in safe mode w/ networking. I'm actually typing this on my rig.

I guess now I'm going to run seatools again and see what's up with my hard drive.

Also, I found a pretty helpful post via google that has some pretty good tips regarding stuff to check. here

So what do you think should be my next course of action?
 
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