New Computer, Windows 7 not running well

Hello all,

My name is Chris and this is my first time posting on these forums. I have been a gamer for most of my life and I just recently built my first gaming computer. I had a professional assist me in the process to check and be sure that I did everything correctly. My computer specs are as follows:

Intel i7 3770k Processor
ASRock Z77 Extreme 4 Motherboard
EVGA GeForce GTX 660Ti GPU
8 Gb of Memory
650 Watt PSU

I purchased an OEM version of Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit to run as my OS.

I started the computer off and everything was running fine. I installed the appropriate drivers, put on internet security, did all of my windows updates, and even set up Windows Live Mail. What I am getting at is that everything was running as would be expected. I have a 120 Gb SSD to act as my storage for my Operating System and what not and I have a 1 Tb HDD to act as my storage for personal things (i.e. games, music, photos). I started saving my games (from Steam) onto my HDD and what I noticed is that the games would start up once per restart of my computer. Essentially if my computer had just been started, the game would load off of my HDD. However if I exited out of the game and moved on to doing other things, when I came back to start that game, or any other game, it would not run.

The programs would be shown in the processes tab if I opened up the task manager, but they would not start. So I contacted the professional who had helped me put my computer together and he told me to try some troubleshooting steps. Basically, he believed it was a software problem where something was stopping the games from running. So we followed the procedures listed in this troubleshooting guide (How to perform a clean boot to troubleshoot a problem in Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8) and were unsuccessful in resolving the issue. So following that we decided to start the computer in safe mode and see what was up. This is where it gets interesting.

Once safe mode was starting it would go to the log in screen and then restart the computer. Then because I entered safe mode via msconfig.exe it would restart again in safe mode and do the same thing over and over again. We could not stop it, we were stuck in a safe mode boot loop. The only thing we could do was put in the OEM Windows 7 64-bit operating disk and try the repair functions it offers. None of the repair functions detected anything was wrong and when we exited we re-entered the boot loop. We ended up reformatting both disk drives and re installing windows, I redid everything from scratch.

Now here we are, I installed everything on my SSD and the games are running, I have yet to try and run anything on my HDD. The system is still patchy. I did a CHKDSK on my SSD and following that it reenter another boot loop (this time in normal windows mode) and had to shut the computer down entirely (i.e. holding down the power button). For some reason my friend and I thought (hey maybe the SATA cables are messed up), so we unplugged them and changed the ports they were plugged into. Then when I started the computer I received one blue screen and a restart before things went back to "normal." I have reformatted the HDD and both drives appear to be running smoothly. I have yet to try and run any games off of the HDD, which was what the computer was intended to do. Oddly though, when I run games on the SDD (the two games I have run so far considering this computer is about two days old) the screen goes black and a pop up says "Drivers suffered from an unexpected crash and has recovered" so I really do not know. I just feel utterly defeated.

After receiving some advice on other forums, I updated all of the drivers and tried to play some more video games. The game I tried was Starcraft 2. The game runs fine for about five minutes and then crashes, resulting in three outcomes.

1.) A pop up in the notification tray saying that the video driver has stopped responding and has recovered.

2.) The entire game crashes and says that the Video Drivers are out of date.

3.) The entire computer freezes and I manually restart it, upon which when it is restarting a blue screen always comes up saying that there was an unexpected error and I should run the fix it program Windows so kindly offers me.

Anyways I uninstalled all of the Nividia Drivers and reinstalled them from the disk, this did not work. Then I updated them all to the newest available versions and this still did not work. Then I uninstalled all of the drivers again and directly installed the most up to date ones from Nividia's website, again this did not work. Every time I did a clean install for the drivers.

I contacted Nividia customer support and they directed me towards putting my GPU into another computer to see if it is a hardware problem or a software problem. He said either the GPU is busted or there is a root problem with Windows where the registry is not properly recognizing the graphics drivers. I put my GPU and it runs beautifully. Every setting on Ultra, clear as day and gorgeous. He played 3 games of Starcraft 2 each one about 30 minutes or so with no problems what so ever. So now what do I do? What does this all mean? How do I fix this? I called Windows support and they will troubleshoot the problem for a $109.00 fee (seriously?). I am so lost

I chose Windows 7 because I loved it so much and it worked so well for me. Has it betrayed me? Please let me know what you all think, if anyone reads this wall of text and decides to help me. Thank you all so much in advance for any help that you can give me.

How to completely remove Nvidia Drivers

1. Go to Add/Remove Programs
2. Uninstall all Nvidia associated software (May require several reboots)
3. Reboot the computer and log back into windows as normal
4.Go to folder options and select “show hidden files and folders”
The next part of the guide will remove all Nvidia files and folders from the computer.
5. Go to your C drive and remove any “Nvidia” folders if there is any
6. Double click the “Program Data” folder (Normally hidden) and remove all Nvidia folders
7. Go back to C and double click “Program Files” and remove all Nvidia folders
8. Go back to C and double click “Program Files (x86)” and remove all Nvidia folders
9. Go back to C and double click “Users”
10. Access the name of your windows profile and double click “AppData” (Normally hidden)
11. Check the “Local”, “LocalLow” and “Roaming” folders for any Nvidia folders and remove them.
12. Go back to “Users” and check the “Default” folder (Normally hidden)
13. Double click “AppData” (Normally hidden)
14. Check the “Local” and “Roaming” folders for any Nvidia folders and remove them.
The next part of the guide will remove registry entries left by the Nvidia drivers.
15. Close everything down and go back to your desktop
16. Click start, then type “regedit”.
17. Click “HKEY_CURRENT_USER” and extend the folder
18. Click “Software” and extend the folder
19. Remove all Nvidia Folders
20. Click “Wow6432Node” and extend the folder (Within the software folder)
21. Remove any Nvidia folders
22. Click “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE” and extend the folder
23. Click “SOFTWARE” and extend the folder
24. Remove all Nvidia Folders
25. Click “Wow6432Node” and extend the folder
26. Remove all Nvidia Folders
27. Click “HKEY_USERS” and extend the folder
28. Click “.DEFAULT” and extend the folder
29. Click “Software” and extend the folder
30. Remove all Nvidia folders
31. Click “S-1-5-18” and extend the folder
32. Click “Software” and extend the folder
33. Remove all Nvidia folders
34. Click “S-1-5-21-1632250243-966907716-928185508-1000” and extend the folder
35. Click “Software” and extend the folder
36. Remove all Nvidia Folders
37. Close down regedit and empty your recycle bin
38. Undo the folder options change to hide the hidden folders
39. Reboot
40. Install your AMD/Nvidia drivers and reboot

Follow the instructions in bold to remove reg keys associated with Nvidia.

Okay so I became extremely frustrated and did the following. My computer went into this weird loop of restarting, giving me a blue error screen and then restarting again. I have literally nothing of personal value on my computer at the moment, seeing as the computer was built two days ago. I have been talking with my friend who is very good with computers and he literally just called me to tell me that maybe my SSD is shot and to try installing everything on my HDD if the problem continues to persist. I just re installed and updated my drivers, I am going to look up a firmware update for that SSD and see if the problem persists. He said he did not think it was the motherboard because of the overall functionality of everything that is plugged into it. As for your second question, I am not sure, I believe it was BIOS? I am not literate enough in computer lingo to understand your question! And thank you for the welcoming, it is a pleasure to be here!

I deleted the drives on the Windows 7 install set up after I had formatted them. Then I partitioned the system reserve for the SSD and put the OS onto it. The HDD is currently blank. I am about to try my game again. I did not see any firmware update for my SSD and I looked here, (Support - Solid State Drives MZ-7TD120 | Samsung Memory & Storage).

For an update, I again had no success, the game crashed shortly after it started. I have decided to use only the HDD now and am currently installing drivers and etc.

Why are you installing a bunch of drivers? Did you think this is XP?

Win7 is driver-complete in the installer and via optional Windows Updates when you enable Automatically deliver drivers via Windows Update (Step 3).

After install, provide ethernet or wireless driver only if needed, then connect to do all rounds of Important and Optional Updates. Only then should you import any missing drivers in Device manager, or the GPU driver if it is Standard VGA placeholder driver because none other was delivered.

Almost every day here we run into users with problems who have installed a bunch of drivers on their own, or ignored Updates because of old XPired fears, when nothing provided by Win7 is to be feared and many updates are required for best performance.

In addition other Best Practices are here for Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 which are the same for retail OEM and will assure a perfect install every time.

You should be running your programs only off the SSD to assure they benefit from the speed increase.