Two weeks ago I upgraded my video card, and since then I'm getting the occasional "Display driver has stopped responding and restarted" error. I did quite a bit of googling, and tried the Registry fix of extending the time-out before Windows restarts the driver to 8 seconds. It didn't really help.
It really only happens when I walk away from the computer for a few hours, and come back. I don't let it sleep or anything, I just have the monitor set to turn off after fifteen minutes.
It also happens occasionally when I play Anno 1404; oddly enough, it happens much, much less often if I run the game in Administrator mode. (I usually use a User account, for security purposes.) None of my other games (New Vegas, Jade Empire, Mass Effect 2) have a problem.
My current specs, which are ridiculously bad, so please don't laugh too much:
Core2 Duo slightly OC'd to 2.93GHz
3GB RAM
Geforce GT 730 (previously a 9800GT!)
To complicate things: a week before I got the card, I had reinstalled Windows from 32 to 64-bit. I didn't format the main hard drive during that Setup process, though, and I think this might be screwing me over.
it could literally be anything. you can only painstakingly manually debug it. yank out the graphics card and run it on onboard graphics. if it still crashes you're one step further. if it doesn't, at least you know it has something to do with your graphics card.
from personal experience though, that doesn't mean much. it can be the card, it can be the graphics driver, it can be the mainboard (defective bus), it can be a memory error in RAM, it can be a lack of power because your new card draws a lot more power your old power supply can't handle, etc.
i spent months debugging my system because i kept getting blue screens in the ATI driver. i even RMAed the bloody card because with onboard graphics everything was fine. guess what, it wasn't the card, because the brand new card did the same thing. it's really cool to build a system, but man, these issues can drive you up the wall and (even for just a short time) make you see the appeal of macs...
>>13982859
Indeed, it can be frtustrating. Thank you for your comments.
I've tried a dozen ideas, and none of them worked.
The previous card worked just fine, just drastically worse performance-wise. Unfortunately the MB lacks on-board graphics anyway.
I do suspect the power supply, but it's a 430W. Two HDDs, no optical drives, and an old card like the 730 should work just fine, as far as I know.
The fact that it only happens in certain software environment situations -- leaving it idle, running in User mode -- leads me to believe it's more likely a software problem.
I already tried several recent versions of the driver, I might try rolling back to a much older version. Or worst case, go through the whole Windows Setup again, this time from scratch.
Your upgraded gfx card needs a better power supply. Check the video card requirements.
>>13983103
Minimum Recommended System Power (W) 300
My power supply: 430W
