Infrequent random freezes

"It's not a true crash, in the sense that the bluescreen was initiated only because the combination of video driver and video hardware was being unresponsive, and not because of any synchronous processing exception".

Since Vista, the "Timeout Detection and Recovery" (TDR) components of the OS video subsystem have been capable of doing some truly impressive things to try to recover from issues which would have caused earlier OSs like XP to crash.

As a last resort, the TDR subsystem sends the video driver a "please restart yourself now!" command and waits a few seconds.

If there's no response, the OS concludes that the video driver/hardware combo has truly collapsed in a heap, and it fires off that stop 0x116 BSOD.

If playing with video driver versions hasn't helped, make sure the box is not overheating.

Try removing a side panel and aiming a big mains fan straight at the motherboard and GPU.

Run it like that for a few hours or days - long enough to ascertain whether cooler temperatures make a difference.

If so, it might be as simple as dust buildup and subsequently inadequate cooling.

I would download cpu-z and gpu-z (both free) and keep an eye on the video temps

STOP 0x116: VIDEO_TDR_ERROR troubleshooting

Thank you for quick response. I'm not sure what to do here. I have the latest nvidia driver so thats out. Im not sure its overheating though. 3 out of 4 times when the freeze happened, my pc wasn't doing anything particularly intensive, and the case is 2 weeks old, how much dust can there be? Could somebody offer some solution because i'm still a bit stumped.

Thinker9876 said:

Thank you for quick response. I'm not sure what to do here. I have the latest nvidia driver so thats out. Im not sure its overheating though. 3 out of 4 times when the freeze happened, my pc wasn't doing anything particularly intensive, and the case is 2 weeks old, how much dust can there be? Could somebody offer some solution because i'm still a bit stumped.

1-You may have to roll the driver back

2-Download CPU-Z and GPU-z (both free) to keep an eye on the temps.

3-May also be power, a flash plugin, other hardware, etc.

Based on recomendations from anther board I reinstalled the nvidia drivers and removed amd catalyst center, which appears to have solved my problem as I didnt have a crash in 3 days. I greatly appreciate the time and effort spent on analyzing my problem.