video card dieing?

[ReadyMan]

In the last 4 days I've had my system do some odd things.
While my wife was watching a streaming video, the screens went black, but the power stayed on, and the monitor's "no signal" message showed up.
Then this happened again, while I was reading a web page the next day. On both instances, holding the power button down and allowing the system to reboot fixed the problem.

Then the next day my system just rebooted itself.

Last night, my screens went black, but then came back to life in a couple of seconds, and windows gave me a note that my video device driver failed but had recovered.

Sounds like a video card problem to me, though none of these instances have occurred during gaming.
Or could it just be a driver issue?

Ideas?

I'm running win7 64 bit
GTX 460 with a somewhat older driver, though it has been rock solid, which is why I've kept it: 8.17.12.6658
I7 920 OC'd to 3.0 (from 2.67)
6gb RAM

Thanks for any input!
RM

[Krom]

Using firefox?

[Grendel]

Interestingly I have a collegues computer doing almost exactly the same thing starting two days ago. i5, GTX470 (275.33), W764. Got some funky entries in the eventlog. And yes, he's running FF (and Solidworks FWIIW.) Going to run the update mill 1st, see if that helps.

[CDN_Merlin]

I get similar issues when I reboot my new Win 7 machine. My monitor will go to sleep saying it has no signal. So I cold boot it and it ends up working. My DVI connection on it died in march so I'm using the VGA input but it's weird. I also can't stay in my BIOS for more than 3 seconds because it boots me out.

[Krom]

Try disabling hardware acceleration in Firefox (options ---> advanced ---> general tab ---> checkbox: "use hardware acceleration when available").

Was probably like a month or two ago all of a sudden my nvidia drivers started crashing at random, I noticed it always happened when Firefox was running.. I tracked it down to some odd bug between newer versions of Firefox and nvidia drivers tripping some timeout in windows causing it to think the display driver had quit responding so it would reset it.

[Grendel]

He wasn't using FF tho. Took it off JIC. System is on watch for now.

[ReadyMan]

Yes, I'm using firefox.
Will give it a go, Krom.
Thanks for the tip!

--edit--
hrmmm. I dont have a " hardware acceleration" checkbox....
I'm using version 3.63

[Krom]

Ahh, hardware acceleration was added in Firefox version 4 (I'm currently using version 8). So that wouldn't be it.

[ReadyMan]

I upgraded to 3.6.24.
Interestingly, as I was dl'ing, my system screens went white, and the system rebooted.

--edit--dl'ed and installed 8.0.1.
Will see if this fixes things.

[AceCombat]

could this be related to everyone who uses BF3 Browsers on FF causing their system to crash the NVidia Drivers while playing the game?


im going to do the disabling thing for now and see what happens

[ReadyMan]

I dont play BF3.
I do however, have a browser open on one of my monitors all the time.
Interestingly, I havent had a crash since updating to the newest version of Firefox.
(I did disable hardware acceleration)

Good catch Krom!

[Grendel]

Interestingly I have a collegues computer doing almost exactly the same thing starting two days ago. i5, GTX470 (275.33), W764. Got some funky entries in the eventlog. And yes, he's running FF (and Solidworks FWIIW.) Going to run the update mill 1st, see if that helps.

FTR, replacing the memory in this system did the trick.

[ReadyMan]

Over the weekend I've been playing Grid Defense (great tower defense game!), and with FF open on my 2nd monitor, my screen has gone black, while the sound/music of the game has continued, for 5 seconds or so, and then the screen goes live again with the action in the game continuing as if nothing happened.

I'm not sure about something wrong with the graphics card or the driver, as I havent received any error messages at all, but its not system related since the game continues as if I was seeing the action. I did a windows memory test, but it didnt take note of anything.

I'm thinking its the driver or the card....

[Grendel]

If the troubles started after updating the driver go back to the one before and be set. Else it's most likely some hardware.

Screen going black temporarily probably means that the driver crashed and reset itself in the background. Reason is usually hardware going bad, could be anything, altho if it's consistent the video card is a good possibility. Check the logs. IIRC there's a registry key to enable Nvidia driver logging, altho I don't think that's helpful.

[ReadyMan]

The event log shows this event a few times (I didnt take note of the time that the black screens occurred, but I think its right around the time of the log):

Log Name: System
Source: Display
Date: 12/18/2011 11:27:10 AM
Event ID: 4101
Task Category: None
Level: Warning
Keywords: Classic


Description:
Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Display" />
<EventID Qualifiers="0">4101</EventID>
<Level>3</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2011-12-18T21:27:10.000000000Z" />
<EventRecordID>192246</EventRecordID>

<Data>nvlddmkm</Data>


The system has been stable and I've had this driver installed for at least half a year with no problems until recently.

[ReadyMan]

It seems from the above that it's definitely something with the video card.
I'll try different drivers to see if things get better.

However, if it's the card, what nvidia card would you recommend as a replacement? (I'd prefer not to spend more than $300)
Is there another generation due to be released after the 500 series?

[Krom]

At any given time nvidia keeps 5-7 generations of GPUs in the pipeline (Fermi was in development for 5 years), so there is always another generation due. The main question is whether or not you want to put up with the annoyance of the current card for that long (and also put up with the risk of it burning out completely).

If you are looking for a card to replace it with right now, the 560 Ti (note, not the vanilla 560) would serve as a good replacement. The 560 Ti isn't so much faster than the 460 / 1 GB that I'd switch normally, but as a replacement for a defective card it does it for a reasonable budget and will be faster (if only slightly) in all areas.

Actually my own GTX 460 is defective and does the same driver reset, although sometimes it shows graphical corruption on the desktop and will usually hard lock the system after a few minutes if I leave it running once the corruption manifests. It usually takes a full day or more of uptime before it happens though, otherwise the card performs exactly as advertised. Once the card starts showing display corruption the only way to fix it is a complete power cycle, warm reboots won't help. My card was a factory overclocked card so I managed to stretch the duration between reboots up to a week or more by backing the clocks off to the nvidia reference specs via modifying the VGA BIOS. I've already RMAed the card once but they didn't fix it so I'm just watching and waiting to see what runs out first, the cards endurance or the remaining year or so on the warranty...

[ReadyMan]

I bought an EVGA card, so it has a lifetime warranty (and I have a 260 that I RMA'd sitting around to use if I send this one in)...I'm wondering if it's the drivers, but since you have the same issue, I'm going to assume it's the card. I dont get the black screens/reboots very often, once a day I guess. It's an annoyance at this point.

[ReadyMan]

Since updating the driver, I havent experienced any of the black screens and reboots, nor the "driver failed and recovered" errors.

However, I have experienced a couple of system freezes, which require holding the power button down for 5 seconds to shut down the system and reboot. On each startup after this, I get an error message before the screen that asks if I want to start windows normally since it was not properly shut down. The error is 'no keyboard detected'. So I have to wait until the countdown expires for the system to start up normally. Interestingly, the keyboard works upon windows startup with no issues.

I have a logitech illuminated keyboard.

Unplugging it and plugging in another older keyboard does not produce any "no keyboard detected" errors. (I've only just done this a few moments ago after my last reboot)

Is it possible that my problems are caused by the keyboard? Seems unlikely.

The error logs only show "windows shutdown was unexpected".

I've checked the RAM using the windows memory checker, and there's no errors.
I'm about to run the nvidia endless city demo to put the graphics card to the test.

Thanks for any help!

[Krom]

A good way to test it would be to try the video card in a different system, or a different video card in the same system.

[ReadyMan]

Well, the system is hanging on startup now, even in safe mode. Cant access the event logs. I still get the startup screen, and can see graphics.
I guess it's not the keyboard

Will put in an old video card now.

--Edit--Loaded my old 260GTX and seems to be running. Will put it through some tests. Interestingly, when I started up, win7 deleted my 460GTX drivers (the newest beta version) and loaded an older version for the 260...

[ReadyMan]

At any given time nvidia keeps 5-7 generations of GPUs in the pipeline (Fermi was in development for 5 years), so there is always another generation due. The main question is whether or not you want to put up with the annoyance of the current card for that long (and also put up with the risk of it burning out completely).

If you are looking for a card to replace it with right now, the 560 Ti (note, not the vanilla 560) would serve as a good replacement. The 560 Ti isn't so much faster than the 460 / 1 GB that I'd switch normally, but as a replacement for a defective card it does it for a reasonable budget and will be faster (if only slightly) in all areas.

Well, I've sent in my request for an RMA for this 460. I think the card is defective, though I'll keep testing things.
Makes me think of two questions, though:

Has the next generation of GPU been announced or talked about yet with a date of release?

Would the 570 with 2.5gb RAM be MUCH faster than my 460? I've read that the 570 (overclocked) is almost the same speed as the 580 series.
Here's a link to a non overclocked card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814130687

I'm out of work at the moment, so I dont want to make an upgrade if it wont be significant (my flight sim games require A LOT of graphics power).

Thanks!

[Krom]

Well, probably the best way to explain it would be to say: "It won't be $400 dollars faster.".

The next generation of nvidia cards (codename "Kepler") are currently on schedule for a planned release sometime around late Q1 or early Q2 of next year.

[ReadyMan]

That's exactly what I needed to know!
I'll wait and skip this generation unless I have to make a purchase.
Thanks Krom!

[ReadyMan]

I got the RMA ok from EVGA today. Glad I bought EVGA RA <--lifetime warranty. This is the second time I'm sending my 460 back.

My 260 is going strong, with no hiccups/freezes/reboots/etc.

Thanks for the help everyone!

[woodchip]

ReadyMan, how long did you run your memory checker? I ran Memcheck for a hour and it said memory was good. After I ran it all day is when the errors started to show up.

[ReadyMan]

I just ran the windows 7 memory check. I takes 20 minutes or so. My next step was to do the extensive memory check, but the replacing of the video card solved the issue.