Windows 7 64 with second monitor crashing

Good evening everyone,

I have a dell xps 15 L502x running windows 7 Home SP1

It has a second monitor connected, doubling the screen side by side. Same resolution - 1920 x 1080.

I can be running only internet explorer or a video or a mixture of things and it will crash leaving a colour screen on the second monitor only. Different colours or a mix or a crazy pattern. Most time I have to turn the power off and hard reset but occasionally it will come back to life, but rarely. I have unplugged the second monitor and it's fine.

I have speccy to monitor temps, everything normal around 60/70 degrees.

I've updated the driver direct from dell and NVidia I've updated other drivers I can think of. I've got the latest bios too.

I've got 16Gb RAM, SSD as the main hdd and it's been cleaned inside and had the heat sink repasted. The issue was before this too so I don't think that is the cause.

I have just put on an bit defender in the last couple of days after only using windows essentials but this hasn't found anything after completing a full scan.

Please help, sometimes it does it every hour, sometimes only once a day or less.

Also..... When the computer was nice and shiny and new I could play call of duty full 1080 no problems.... I can't even start playing now without it crashing at a basic setting.

Thanks in advance.

Ben

That temp may be high depending on what you are doing.

Anyway, things you can try:
- changing the cables between monitors (if possible), and see if issue will pass to the other monitor
- attach the monitor that acts up to the other port (unplug your main display)
- download and make bootable DVD/USB for Linux Mint MATE, and boot with it (no install) - see if it will be alright

I reverted back to an old driver, about 1 year old. This so far has solved the problem. I don't play new games and won't be updating the driver if it's going to do this again.