Windows Aero randomly shuts off, and GPU temperatures elevate

I hope I'm just being paranoid and everything is fine but...


A few days ago, I had an incident of "Display driver has stopped responding and successfully recovered" for the first time in more than a year, and I freaked out thinking my graphics card was starting to fail.

I discovered then there was a very big update for the graphics card released a week before that, and so installed that and restarted. Not sure if that was in any way related.


Now tonight, in the middle of playing a video game, while playing music in Windows Media Player, and watching a video clip on Media Player Classic (I do this frequently enough without issue), my screen began to sloppily black out---one black window for the game in windowed mode, then the rest of it---and the screen returned, but my Windows Aero had shut off, reverting my computer scheme back to basic.


I had experienced similar things with my old graphics card, and it typically led to the computer freezing up, so I rapidly closed all my open programs, and ran up SpeedFan to check the temperature.


Despite closing everything, the temperature remained steadily high, and suddenly a weird, faint noise began to emanate from my computer. I think it sounded something like a squeaking or whining sound.


Gradually, the temperature started to go back down, though it took longer than normal, and the Aero returned after I logged off and logged back in.


I also checked my computer properties, and saw that my Windows Experience Index was grayed out as if outdated. So I refreshed it---the temperature rose again and made similar whining noises during the Direct X testing---then came back with the exact same rating as before.


I looked around online and found that almost this exact thing has happened to other people, where Windows Experience Index will automatically refresh itself at some point, when the computer is idle. But my computer wasn't idle at this point in time.



What is going on? Is something wrong with my graphics card or was this some odd occurrence? It's the first time this has ever happened to me ever since first getting Windows 7 in 2009.



My computer specs are:
Intel Core i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40 GHz
16 GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce GTX 570
AsRock Z-77 Extreme4-M motherboard



EDIT: I haven't restarted yet, but I've tried launching a game that is much heavier on graphics. Thus far, I haven't noticed any odd noises coming from the computer, and the GPU temperature is at the same level it was when this incident occurred (which is normal when under load---60-70 degrees C)

I got that program and forcibly boosted fan speed to highest, let it run for a few seconds. It made no noise. I'm not seeing any options to administer a stress test, save for a "K" button for a MSI Kombustor program, which identifies as a "stability test"

how long should I run it for? And what exactly should I look for in terms of limits and such? Thus far, it's been on for 5 minutes, temperature stabilized between 77 and 80 degrees C, and there's been no problems, no change, no unusual noises.


And how does the Windows Experience Index incident fit into all this too?

The only reason I freaked out as badly as I did was because this was just two or three days after my card did a "Display driver has stopped responding..." thing for the first time in almost a year, after a big long time of having it happen all the time, regardless of GPU load or temperature.


Also, it was around 1 AM when this occurred, but I've never had WEI automatically run on its own

temperature stabilized between 77 and 80 degrees C, and there's been no problems, no change, no unusual noises.

Normal temps for a gpu at 100%, most gpu's can exceed 90C without ill effects. Make sure you dust the inside of the puter.

When you installed the new gpu drivers did you do a clean install? I've seen a lot of gpu blue screens caused by remnants of old drivers fouling the works. Uninstall gpu drivers from control panel, run "Driver Sweeper", reboot and then install the new gpu drivers. Fixed a lot of boxes with this procedure.