 | Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years. Thanks, CNET Support |
Hi,
Discussion is locked
That's not a driver issue then, it's a hardware issue. It may well be that your video card is at fault here. I forget specifically which of the 8xxx series of nVidia cards was subject to the recall, but suffice to say it wasn't a very good time to be buying an nVidia card. Can't say for certain that's what's wrong with your unit, but it's definitely something to keep in mind.
Now, for a quick test, have you tried just running the unit with the side cover off?
I ordered a new graphic card, a radeon 6950 but I want to be sure that my taughts that it was material was true. I never tried to run it the cover off. I was wandering why is it running well on windows stock display driver and don't crash if it's the graphic card's fault? Do you have an idea
Software rendering would be my guess. If the video card is bad, having the CPU do all the heavy lifting might be just enough to keep it up and running.
I never taught of that. But the screen is still connected to the graphic card O_O?? How come that if the card is faulty it can still transmit the data thru the dvi output?
If the CPU is doing the work, then all the video card has to do is pass the signal along. So long as it's not like a defective contact pin or something so fundamental to the card's operation it can't do even that much, you should be fine.
For example, had a unit at work, been in and out several times. It is a unit from a line with a known issue with the graphics chip, and there's even a special diagnostic program to test for a bad chip. I ran one version of the test which works at just the bare metal level so to speak. No OS, just sending raw commands to the card. Those tests passed. Then I ran one that uses the OS so it can do things with OpenGL, and those failed miserably. So long as I wasn't trying to use the 3D functions of the GPU, it was fine, but when I tried using those functions, it wasn't so fine.
Depending on what part of the video card may or may not be bad, different things might set it off. Things that maybe weren't available in the stock driver, and were then done in software by the CPU.
Two questions:
1. How do you know it's the display driver that crashed and not one of the hundreds of other things in Windows that can crash. You didn't tell.
2. What details about the crash are shown in the event log.
A blue screen during install points to hardware errors. How about trying another video card?
Kees
When there the blue screen, there's a message that says the display driver crash and windows was unable to recover it. And where can I find this event log?
It's best to google VISTA EVENT VIEWER (or XP EVENT VIEWER if your OS is Windows XP). That you find exactly the right instructions. I can't give them, because you forgot to tell your OS.
Anyway, the error code on the blue screen is interesting also. You didn't even tell that.
Kees
Chowhound
Comic Vine
GameFAQs
GameSpot
Giant Bomb
TechRepublic