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Monitor going black and PC restarting

S

stipalgl

Member
First off, let me list my PC specs:

Intel E8400
Corsair 750TX
Asus P5K-E
4GB Mushkin DDR2-800
Nvidia 8800GT
500GB Seagate SATA II
Benq G2400W
Windows Vista 64bit Ultimate

Long story short: A couple of days ago, I swapped the 8800GT which I had been "borrowing" for some time from a friend with a 7900GT.

With the 7900GT now in place, the PC refused to display the correct resolution, indicating a maximum of 1280 x 1024. Going into the device manager showed a yellow exclamation mark next to the video card and it gave me a (code 43) error. This was under the most recent 175.19 drivers. I tried some older drivers but all resulted in the same issues until I rolled all the way back to the standard Microsoft driver, before installing the 165.21 drivers. The resolution issue was fixed and the video card no longer displayed the error under the driver menu.

Then, just today, while surfing the internet, the monitor gradually went black while the computer remained on. Restarting the computer from the Windows didn't work and neither did the reset button, so I had to actually turn off the power button and turn it back on to start the computer up again.

I then proceeded to try and update the driver as much as I could and found out that the latest working driver I could manage from all the available ones was the 169.44. About a half hour after installing this driver, the monitor went black again but this time, the computer shut off.

So far, it has done this three times and now I've left the computer off and am posting this from a notebook.

I browsed the web and some likely causes appear to be with the video card and/or PSU and/or motherboard. I doubt it could be the latter two based on what I've explained above but my question is, is the card simply dying? Is it something else? Can this in a way destroy my PSU and/or other components?
 
Its hard to say if the PSU is an issue since you haven't listed which one you have. Once we have that information we'll be better equipped to help you figure this out.

But i do have a question for you. When you updated the drivers did you completely install the old drivers? As in booting the system into safe mode. Then installing the drivers. Then you'll need to go in with driver cleaner and make sure all components of the drivers are removed. Then you boot back into windows and install the new drivers. Rolling back and installing different drivers over the old ones always causes problems. There is always bits of the old drivers left behind that get in the way so they have to be removed completely.

Here is the free dowload of Driver Cleaner.
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=745
 
It's a Corsair 750TX, a 750 Watt PSU. It's actually listed up above in my specs. The PSU itself is supposedly high end and I purchased it along with most of my components around early March of this year.

As for your question, no, I didn't boot the system in safe mode. So you're saying I should completely remove everything using Driver Cleaner in safe mode then go into normal Windows and install the newest drivers clean, correct?

Thanks for the quick reply by the way.
 
UPDATE: So I uninstalled the Nvidia drivers in normal Windows then went into safe mode and ran Driver Cleaner Pro. The problem is when I click start, it tells me it's cleaning with Nvidia and that I should wait. It's been over an hour so far and nothing has happened. The computer isn't frozen however, it's just taking a ridiculous amount of time to finish. Anyone else experience this? Am I doing something wrong or did I miss a step?
 
I tried it a second time and again it was taking forever. This time I waited it out and went and did something else for a while. A couple of hours later it was done. I removed all the Nvidia drivers, went back into normal mode, made sure my internet was disconnected so it wouldn't auto update and tried installing the most recent drives (175.19). After the install the now very annoying yellow exclamation mark was back with the same code 43 error. The monitor and correct resolution are not recognized and once again I'm stuck at 1280 x 1024.

If I go back to 165.21 or 165.29, the resolution will return and the error will disappear but the blackouts may occur again.

So I ask again, am I looking most likely at a video card issue? Is it overheating or just dying?
 
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