Help diagnosing Win7 crashing problem

What's the easiest way to uninstall and reinstall video drivers? I installed the latest when I installed Win7, then Windows Update updated them for me to a later version.

Did Windows Update install your video card makers latest drivers or just the latest generic Windows drivers?

nVidia version 8.17.12.6724. When Windows Update told me there were updates the version number matched what was on the nVidia site, it was a smaller number.

What's the best way to uninstall drivers? Just go into the hardware area, click on the 8500GT, properties, uninstall? It says it'll uninstall the whole video card, but I guess it'll install something generic to keep the system working until I install proper ones.

tim wrote in post #12406046
My computer has started randomly crashing since I moved to Win7-64, once or twice a week usually but one day it did it three times. It happens often when I use USB, otherwise it's pretty random. XP was stable.

The PC is self built, Q6600 on an Asus P5Q SE/R. 8GB of RAM (4GB Corsair Dominator, 4GB Corsair Value Select), and a fanless nVidia 8500GT card. I have two OWC SSDs, two Seagate disks, and one WD black disk.

Every now and then the screen flickers, and I get a message saying the nVidia driver (latest version) has stopped responding and was being restarted. That doesn't seem to happen at the same time as the crash.

I have all the windows updates applied, and as far as I can tell I have all the latest drivers.

I have no idea how to work out what the problem is. Any suggestions? Below is what windows says when it reboots.

I have the ASUS G60JX, and so far had not had the crashing problem, but I have had the video card shutdown and restart, for no apparent reason. The screen is black for a few seconds then I get a message. I have read in other forums of others having the same problem, and it doesn't appear to be any particular model that this happens to. My son has an ASUS with integrated video, not sure of model, and he has had no problems what so ever with his. Other thien this I am more then happy with it, asit does everything I want/need it to do, but if ths contimues it may be the only ASUS laptopn I have, as I will switch back to Toshiba or HP.

I know this didn't offer any advise, but maybe it will provide a little light on the subject.

tim wrote in post #12406046
My computer has started randomly crashing since I moved to Win7-64, once or twice a week usually but one day it did it three times. It happens often when I use USB, otherwise it's pretty random. XP was stable.

The PC is self built, Q6600 on an Asus P5Q SE/R. 8GB of RAM (4GB Corsair Dominator, 4GB Corsair Value Select), and a fanless nVidia 8500GT card. I have two OWC SSDs, two Seagate disks, and one WD black disk.

Every now and then the screen flickers, and I get a message saying the nVidia driver (latest version) has stopped responding and was being restarted. That doesn't seem to happen at the same time as the crash.

I have all the windows updates applied, and as far as I can tell I have all the latest drivers.

I have no idea how to work out what the problem is. Any suggestions? Below is what windows says when it reboots.

I am curious as to how you 'moved' to win 7, did you upgrade using an upgrade disc without cleaning installing the previous OS?

400dabuser wrote in post #12427018
I am curious as to how you 'moved' to win 7, did you upgrade using an upgrade disc without cleaning installing the previous OS?

I mentioned that above. I bought Win7-64 OEM and installed it on a brand new SSD.

tim wrote in post #12411562
nVidia version 8.17.12.6724. When Windows Update told me there were updates the version number matched what was on the nVidia site, it was a smaller number.

What's the best way to uninstall drivers? Just go into the hardware area, click on the 8500GT, properties, uninstall? It says it'll uninstall the whole video card, but I guess it'll install something generic to keep the system working until I install proper ones.

Yup. If you uninstall all the nVida drivers, it should eventually revert to a basic VGA driver. Probably 640x480....

Or, if you have System Restore running, you could just do that.

A couple of days ago I uninstalled the drivers, rebooted, then installed the latest version. This morning the computer blue screened again, some time between (or during) me putting it to sleep and waking it up, so it's not that

Is there a diagnostic/stress test type program I can run that might help? It's weird that it was fine in XP, but has problems in Win7-64.

Oh, man, where do I start?

1. For video drivers always use Driver Sweeper, which you should run under "safe mode".
2. Nvidia 8500gt, are you for real?!? Why don't you just plug in a floppy while you are at it...
3. 8GB of mismatched RAM? Why? Just pull out the 4GB value memory. At this point you are running into inconsistency between your modules and those can always throw an error, even if there is nothing wrong with the RAM modules themselves.
4. Crashing when plugging USB - usually 3 reasons - bad drivers (which you said you've checked), bad motherboard (they do fail) or power supply. What's your PSU?

5. Did you flash the BIOS before updating to Win7? If not, this is where I would start.

BTW, you bought 2 SSD - that's the most useless update you can make with your rig, in a sense that you'd get the least amount of performance increase going this way. I would go for the video card first, since the rest of your components, while not new technology (Intel i, triple channel memory, etc), are still decent.

Haha, thanks altrus. Video cards make little difference to photographers don't they? I know it's a bit old, I just used the one I got a few years back, it seems to work fine, but replacing it wouldn't be a problem.

I found the SSD upgrade worthwhile for my workflow, which works with thousands of images at a time. They'll move to my next PC as well, which will make better use of them.

1. Will try it, thanks.
2. You think I should upgrade? Will it likely help with this problem? Performance isn't an issue.
3. That's worth a try, that's the only hardware change I did moving to Win7. Memtest said it was fine though.
4. I haven't checked USB drivers, I have either default windows or the ones that came from Asus. MB and PS have been fine.
5. Yes.

I guess my next step is to take the new ram out and see what happens. If it's stable either there's a mismatch or it's faulty.

Thanks for your help

Tim, I feel for you.

Looking back 12 months, I bought a new Gigabyte motherboard with an AMD X4 chip to run windows 7 and CS5. This thing would crash just like yours did. I went through the ringer trying to figure out what was causing it. I replaced just about everything on that computer to figure it out. Never did. I ended up buying a new i7-2600 when they came out in January of this year. The new computer is rock solid.

I just use the AMD machine with XP and use it to surf the web and non business uses, and leave the i7 for doing work only.

Hope you find your issue. For me I wish I would have just junked the machine on day 2 rather than spending months trying to work it out. The lost money in productivity would have easily paid for a new 'name brand' computer with Win7 already installed and then stability would have been someone else's problem.

Matt.

Is Superfetch disabled for ur SSD drives?

Matt, thanks, you have a point. The case and power supply are 5+ years old, and the motherboard/CPU are a few years old, it's due for complete replacement with something much faster and quieter some time before too long. I was hoping this one could be sold or kept as a backup though. Maybe i'll just put XP back on it, it worked fine.

It crashes rarely enough and boots fast enough that it's not a huge issue. I'll try the ram thing, after that I may just give up.

Chriszz, I have no idea what superfetch is, and i've never changed anything to do with it. I'll google it and try to work it out, thanks.

Btw, is this Windows 7 with SP1 update? If not, update to SP1 along with the latest nVidia drivers.
I recall I was getting a message about nVidia restarting, and that was resolved with an update to the latest nVidia drivers.

I was also getting BSODs, sometimes related to the computer being put to sleep, sometimes not - and I installed a couple of Microsoft updates that resolved the issue - I actually don't have SP1, but I'm sure SP1 would have those updates rolled into it.

If you have the time and inclination, install Win7/SP1 to a hard drive fresh, then use it for a bit and see if it BSODs on you. Then start updating each driver one by one. The reason I recommend this is so you can format and reinstall without killing your SSD's P/E cycles doing these experiments. Make a backup image of your system after the fresh install so that you can easily reinstall without having to waste a couple hours doing a fresh install.

Oh, and I highly recommend creating a bootable Windows 7 installation partition to a USB or external HDD drive - makes diagnosing and experimenting a lot less painful. Waiting for the DVD to boot up and all the services to load is a major waste of time - on a USB flash drive or external HDD drive, it's super quick.

Yes I have SP1 applied, the latest nVidia drivers, and every windows update. My install is fresh, only weeks old on the new SSD, and I really don't have the patience to mess with drivers individually.

I could go through and try to update every single driver, but that'd take ages.

Not sure what you mean about a bootable windows7 install partition on USB. I'm not going to be doing a lot of experimenting. I tried to make a Win7 recovery disk on DVD but it failed with some kind of error, and the one I downloaded doesn't work. Annoying.