Help! Random hard reboot during games

[dredd2929]

Right in the middle of WoW, the screen goes blank and I get a dialog box:

"The nv4_disp display driver has stopped working normally. Save your work and reboot the system to restore full display functionality. The next time you reboot the machine a dialog box will be displayed giving you a chance to upload the data about this failure to Microsoft."

Of course this chance never comes because the message just keeps dissappearing and reappearing over and over again; I always end up having to reset to get out of it. What confuses me about the error is that my motherboard is an ABIT UL8...no nForce 4 chipset there. How can there be a problem with the "nv4_disp display driver"???

I tried running Driver Cleaner, follow all the little nuiances in DC's readme to the T, but no luck. What's strange is that after cleaning all of the nVidia files out, rebooting and preparing to reinstall the drivers, I tried going into DC again and removing the nForce chipset drivers again just for laughs, and it found them again!!! WTH??? Something is installing the darn nForce 4 chipset driver in the background without disclosing it, and it's really starting to irritate me. I did unplug the network cable throughout the process, so it can't be because of that.

The drivers I've been trying to use are version 81.98.

This is actually my brother's computer so the specs aren't the same as in my signature. Here they are:

WinXP Home
ABIT UL8
1GB DDR RAM
AMD 3500+ Venice
eVGA 5900 Ultra

Thanks for any help.

 

[mazeroth]

This is a long shot but fixed my DFI/Opty 165 with a similar problem. If your board has two ethernet ports, disable the nvidia port and use the other port instead. Yes, a very long shot, but mine was doing something like yours in games with random blue screens of death. I haven't had one in almost a month since I disabled the nvidia ethernet.

EDIT:

Nevermind. Yours is a Uli board. Sorry.

 

[SolMiester]

Dredd, the error is the display driver, not the nforce chipset which you dont have! Try some later drivers for that 5900Ultra

 

[dredd2929]

Oh, OK. Um I'm already trying the latest chipset aren't I? 81.98 is the latest isn't it?

 

[SpeedZealot369]

try the beta drivers

 

[dredd2929]

You mean like 84.20?

What I just don't understand is how nForce chipset drivers are getting on the system. Not only that, but after running Driver Cleaner in safe mode, then rebooting, I ran Driver Cleaner again just out of curiosity, and the nForce drivers are back!! This make zero sense. Windows must be installing these driver, cuz I'm sure as hell not. Or maybe nVidia's unified driver is installing them?? Who knows?

 

[Matt2]

nv4_disp has nothing to do wtih nvidia chipset drivers. "nv4_disp.dll" is the actual video card driver.

Update to 84.20, or any other driver and see if that helps the problem.

 

[moonboy403]

hmm...this happened to me before, it was because my oced system wasn't stable

it had nothing to do with my video card

in you case, it might be the ram/cpu just like mine

 

[dredd2929]

Originally posted by: Matt2
nv4_disp has nothing to do wtih nvidia chipset drivers. "nv4_disp.dll" is the actual video card driver.

OK, I understand that now about that particular file. But still, why does Driver Cleaner find files associated with the nForce chipset on my system? Driver Cleaner has different filters for different device types. I run the "nVidia" filter and it find files and deletes them. THEN I run the "nForce chipset" filter and it finds DIFFERENT files, and deletes them. My question is, what are nForce chipset drivers doing on a system with a ULI AGP motherboard? Is Driver Cleaner mistakingly identifying them as chipset driver files when they are in fact soley for the graphics card? And why do these files reappear after ever time I reboot, AFTER I delete them with Driver Cleaner in safe mode, with the network cable unplugged the whole time? I mean there's not a whole lot of options here. It's got to be reinstalling the files autonomously from the hard drive during reboot. How do I stop it from doing that? Remember this is after unstalling and cleaning out everything nVidia, and before reinstalling the new drivers.

Maybe if I list the files Driver Cleaner is finding then y'all will be able to better make sense of my ordeal. I'll do that as soon as I'm able.

 

[dredd2929]

Well I ended up reinstalling WinXP and it seemed fix the problem.

 

[linkgoron]

Yeah, this happened to me around a year ago. I lost my sound,video and mouse drivers when it happened to me. After hours of work I managed to fix video and mouse (I'm no noob, but I had tons of problems), sound came back after I installed Windows 2000.

 

[TheRyuu]

First off, you overclock? If you do make sure it's stable or return to stock speeds.

Second, try the Xtream-G 84.20 drivers. Maby that might fix your problem. Get them here

Third, if you overclock via coolbits, set that back to stock speeds and see what happens.

 

[dredd2929]

I haven't done any over clocking on this system.

There's been a couple of lockups since resinstalling Windows, but I don't think its a driver related issue; not anywhere near as serious or frequent as before. I'm suspecting that my hard drive is going bye-bye, because there have been several cases of corrupted downloaded files lately. Thanks for the link to those 84.20 drivers though, I may try them down the road.

 

[Gstanfor]

Ensure that motherboard is running the latest BIOS - I have a Socket A ABIt board (VIA based) among my systems and experience with a few of their nForce4 boards, they always ship with flaky BIOSes for some reason. Once patched up though they are OK.

 

[dredd2929]

Yeah, when I first bought the motherboard I couldn't even get it to boot without a BIOS update. How annoying. I'll check to see if there's a new BIOS rev. since then.

 

[blckgrffn]

My guesses, after facing this several times, are:

1) Your power supply is killing itself. You have a lot of stuff, it could only take one weak capacitor. I have helped so many people replace power supplies here at school lately it is freakin' crazy. They are definite weak link in PC's right now.

2) Your video card is over heating and causing the crash. Have you observed your temps during gaming? There is an app out there that does this, but I can't think of its name right now...

Good luck

Nat

 

[dredd2929]

Yeah, I was suspecting that the video card is overheating as well. I'm trying to figure out how to get more ventilation to it. I doubt it's the power supply; this system is not the one described in my signature. Here are the specs:

Enermax 650W
ABIT UL8
AMD Venice 3500+
1GB Kingmax RAM
nVidia 5900 Ultra
30GB Maxtor IDE HD
60GB Maxotr IDE HD

Although, that Enermax is pretty old, so I guess it could be the cause after all.

Thanks for the suggestions.