Video Driver Failure?

[John Deering]

Hey everyone, I was playing rFactor with a mod I just installed on my PC tonight and all the sudden the game froze on me! I haven't had that happen since I built it a few months ago. I wasn't sure what to do because I couldn't use my mouse or Esc. key, they didn't do anything so I hit Ctrl Alt Delete. A few seconds went by and I was back to windows but the resolution was way down at 600X800 like it was in safe mode. A window popped up that said Video Driver failure report to microsoft after rebooting. Well I tried to shut it down but it wouldn't so I had to hit the main power switch on the PSU to shut it down.

I rebooted and everything seems to be back to normal and I also tried rFactor as well. Its running like it should. Through the device manager I looked up the driver and did a scan to see if it was up to date and it said yes. Could this just be a glitch? Just something gone a little hay wire for a minute? Or could I have a problem with my GPU driver? It's been working with out a problem for months and I'm not even sure if I should be concerned about so I figured I would ask you guy's. If you need more details just let me know. Specs, ect.....

 

[Damian Henderson]

What's your specs?

Do you monitor the temperatures while gaming? If not have HWmonitor running while doing a gaming session and check the max temp of the GPU.

http://www.cpuid.com/download/hwmonitor/HWMonitor_114_setup.exe

It could just be a driver error to though, I would advise running ccleaner and fix some registry issue's also:
http://www.ccleaner.com/

 

[John Deering]

What's your specs?
Do you monitor the temperatures while gaming?

It could just be a driver error to though, I would advise running ccleaner and fix some registry issue's also:
http://www.ccleaner.com/

1. Cooler Master Haf 932 Case

2. Cooler Master V8 CPU Cooler

3. EVGA 750i SLI FTW Mobo

4. EVGA GTX260 GPU Super Overclocked Edition

5. Intel Q6600 CPU

6.G.Skill 4Gb Ram

7. WD 1TB SATA HDD

8.ASUS 22X22 SATA Optical Drive

9. Corsair TX750W PSU

10. Windows XP SP3

11. Running dual monitors Hanns G. 28" Sony LCD TV 26"

This may be a little more info than one would need but I figured I would list the hole build. Yes I do have REAL TEMP but I didn't happen to look at the temps at the time :o( How ever I don't think I have seen it go above 68 70c under load. I have also already did a registry clean up right after it happened. Hopefully it was just a glitch! It's my baby.... ;o)

 

[John Deering]

Well it just did it again!!! In the middle of an online race! I took notice of my GPU temp and it was 63c at freeze. This time the computer was frozen and I had to manually shut it down! I didn't get the Video driver failure window this time. It just froze! Any thoughts?

Edit: I'm being told that this is a lot more common than I originally would have guessed! Even with a modern PC. I'm brand new to PC sim racing in case ya's couldn't tell...lol

 

[Damian Henderson]

Well, normally if you leave it to freeze it will come back, try that next time. Sometimes it will come back with corrupt graphics. If not then it could be more serious.

Do you play any other games? You should test them for a while and see if it happens.

And try changing driver's also.

 

[John Deering]

Ok I'll do that and the only other games I play are Crysis, Call of Duty WaW and Modern Warfare on my PC. So far the 2 that this has happened with was rFactor ( offline ) and GTR Evo ( Online ) and never had it happen in any other game.

If I copy a new or different driver on to a DVD R from EVGA on my laptop and then put the DVD R in my desktop and run it will it just over wright my current driver that I am using now?

 

[Damian Henderson]

Ok I'll do that and the only other games I play are Crysis, Call of Duty WaW and Modern Warfare on my PC. So far the 2 that this has happened with was rFactor ( offline ) and GTR Evo ( Online ) and never had it happen in any other game.

Sounds like could possibly be the normal thing with ISI engine games and Nvidia drivers. Work flawless in other games ( better then ATi driver's ) but in Evo, rF not good for some people, get the freezing.

If I copy a new or different driver on to a DVD R from EVGA on my laptop and then put the DVD R in my desktop and run it will it just over wright my current driver that I am using now?

You can do that fine yes, but of course it's better to remove the old ones first via device manager etc.

 

[John Deering]

Ok thank you for your help!! I just noticed that EVGA has a new video driver out that was released the 21st of Aug. I guess I'll run that and see if this issue continues.

 

[Richard Kay]

It's also worth using driver cleaner pro to remove some of the hidden files that are not removed through device manager before installing new graphics drivers.