Video or GPU problem? Need help

[wtfmate]

Hello all,

First off, my cpu I use is an Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q8200 @ 2.33GHz (copied straight off of computer properties). WIndoes 7, 32 bit. 2 gigs of ram. My motherboard is the ECS G31T-M.

My friends built me this computer, and it was working fine, except that the video card (Nvidia Geforce 8500GT) was having a lot of problems. Every time I'd try to play games, the images would distort, so to speak. My display driver, which was completely up to date, kept on getting the "Failed to respond, but recovered" message. My computer also blue screened a lot, I mostly got the "Display Driver attempted to recover from timeout and failed", and sometimes I got the "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" one. I checked to see if that was a result of overheating, but the temperature of the card never exceeded 55 degrees celsius.

I figured my GPU was corrupt, so I went ahead and got another video card, the MSI N9400GT. I uninstalled my previous drivers, removed the 8500, put it the new card and installed the latest drivers, and I still have the same problems: My screen would freeze for a couple of seconds, I would get the "Windows Kernel Driver Version 195.62 has stopped responding and has successfully recovered", and if I didn't get that, I'd blue screen. Is there any way to fix this problem? Help would be much appreciated! Thank you!

 

[MindoverMaster]

Are you using the default Windows driver, or the driver from ATI/NVidia?

Do you have a spare PCI Express slot?

 

[Hefemeister]

What power supply do you have? MSI recommends at least 300watts.

 

[Fladam]

Does the case have sufficient cooling? Distorted images sounds like a heat related problem.

If not, try pulling out the card and re sitting it, if you have one try a different PCI-E slot. If that fails, get a disk and burn an image file with memtest86+ on it, then set your bios to boot from cd and place it in there, let it run for 4 hours and check for errors with the RAM. Failing that run a test on the PSU to check your getting enough power to the GPU.

I'd also try running a malware/virus scanner just to be on the safe side.

Also make sure you get the drivers straight from the nVidia website rather than from windows update.

gl man

 

[wtfmate]

Hello all, thanks for all the responses!

I am using the drivers from NVIDIA... I do not have a spare PCI-E slot. My power supply is 500W. I've also never had a problem with the card overheating, the highest it will get to is 59 degrees celsius, even when gaming.

I'll try the memtest, however, people are telling me that its a problem with the nvidia drivers for windows 7 users, so this might be impossible to fix unless I get an ATI or something... but thanks for the help. I"ll be back with the memtest results.

 

[Fat.Clown]

reinstall windows and see what happens

 

[Slaymate]

I've been having issues with the Nvidia 190 series drivers myself. They Suck. I'm using the 186.18 drivers

Windows 7 32-bit - NVIDIA DRIVERS 186.18 WHQL

 

[Niverive]

Yes the newest Nvidia drivers have been hit and miss for me lately as well, lucky I'm working atm, but an 8500 shouldn't overheat that card isn't very powerful, unless you got your computer hidden away somewhere, if it is then you should move it out its never good to put computers in those computer enclosures nowadays anyways XD, but I mean my computer currently has a 8600 and it doesn't get very warm and my computer case cooling is mediocre, but it is on top of my desk.

But a good suggestion is try a few different Nvidia drivers I had to play around with them here lately to get it to stop showing "The Nvidia driver has failed but recovered" message or w/e it says exactly.

 

[geforce8800]

is it seems like the gpu is getting hotter? this could lead to your problem as well somehow or is it being bottleneck at some point?