video driver stopped. had to be restarted. [ Edited ]

[dtipton]

HPE-170f  AY604AA-ABA

W7 Home Premium

Yellow triangle warning at the system tray:

video driver stopped.  had to be restarted.

Usually occurs right after screens (dual monitors) go blank/black and then flickers.  General repeats and then final locks the system requiring a power supply shut down.

System (hardware) has been relatively the same since purchase (about 1.5 ago.

Recent crashed cause Harddrive corruption and had to do a system recovery back to factory software settings.  All programs added since new have been lost.

My guess is video adapter is flacky.  Don't remember the specs but was pushing Adobe CS5 quite easily.  Now must all be reinstalled.  Thank goodness for NAS's.

Labels on back of video adapter:

HP Assembly No: 594502-001  Fisker2 10-M01  SN: [Personal Information Removed]   CTBDNK049VYBox2

I think it had an Nvidia chipset  ... GeForce maybe.

Video adapter has been removed so system cannot be powered up.  Waiting on response.  Bad system?  Bad video adapter?

Thanks, dtipton

[Danjen]

My guess would be the video card. Does that video card have a fan on it? Does the fan work well? Can you see any capacitors that are starting to round on the top or leak a brown or dark substance?  Do you have another video card to test?

[Daniel_Potyrala]

Hi,

A.

Check is your desktop overheating or not.

To do that use HWMonitor (free and recommended).

If it's overheating then check this guide.

B.

Update Bios.

How to update the Bios?

Resource:
Updating the BIOS

Download the latest Bios update from here.

Disconnect from the Internet. Close all currently running programs. Disable anti-virus and firewall.

Double-click the Bios update exe file. It may take some time, so it is important to remain patient, do not interrupt the process. Allow the desktop to restart after applying the updated BIOS.

While this update is running do not:

• switch off your desktop, 

• try to run any software or do anything on the desktop.

Note:

The Bios update process is always risky. You will do this at your own risk.

C.

Update the graphics driver.

Uninstall the nVidia graphics driver. Check the link below:

How to remove nVidia graphic drivers from Windows system.

Download and install the latest driver from here.

Restart the system and check the result.

[dtipton]

Thanks for the response. 

Unfortunately, I didn't open my case to see if the fan was operating or not.  And since most of the card is shrouded, I can't do a good component inspection to see if anything has fried.

I don't have another card to test out.

My other PC has a card with GT 545 chipset.  I went online and ordered an EVGA with GTX 560 chipset. 

The "defective" card has a 6 wire power connector and a 2 wire connector.   Do you have any idea what the 2 wire is for?  Temperature sensor?

Thanks,  dtipton

[dtipton]

From bad to worse. Installed new 560 and nothing. Plug in power, I get light on back but as soon as press the top power button, it goes back off. Nothing lights, nothing powers up. The P/S is probably under rated for the new video card which has not one but two power connectors. The P/S has only one and powering the other via an adapter.
Probably going p/s shopping now .

[Danjen]

Please double and triple check that the power connector you put into the video card is the correct match to your card. The cards come with adaptors. I would use them first. The adaptors are still in flux and some old power connectors are burning up new video cards because the do not match the connector but can be pushed in. Make sure the rounded and square shapes match the plug they are going into exactly, no exceptions.

[SomelOguh]

Hello,

Have  you tried to update your video card driver?

Did you check for any latest udpates?

THanks,

[dtipton]

Kind of hard to do with the card not installed.  Kind of hard to do since (see my post) that the PC won't even power on now.

I'm shopping for a replacement PSU now.  Looks like the current PSU is marked with "do not exceed 385W and has only one 6 pin GPU connector.  Anything less than 500W will probably not be enough.  Plus, the newer PSU's have the 2x 6 pin GPU connectors so I won't need the adapter plug.

If this doesn't fix the problem(s) the computer is probably toast and I'll have a brand new eVGA adapter and PSU to go into something.

I doubt that new drivers will get me over this hump ... at least not right now.  Once I can see the Desktop again, then I'll start updating drivers.

Thanks,

Dave Tipton