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#1
Graphics Card random shutdowns and crashes
I originally posted a topic about this in the BSOD Help Section here: BSOD with error 0x00000116 accompanied by display driver crashes. Unfortunately, no one has responded in about a week and the issue remains, although it no longer causes BSODs, so I am starting a new topic here.
Basically, for the past few weeks, I have experience an unbelievable amount of graphics card/driver crashes. My graphics card is an nVidia GeForce GTX 580M in an Alienware M17x R3 laptop. Originally, the screen would black out and recover with the OS giving me a message saying that the driver crashed and recovered successfully. The extremely odd thing about the crashes is that they aren't caused by anything in particular and can happen within 2 minutes of each other or take hours or even days. The crashes seemed to happen in repeat bursts once it crashed once, then not again for hours. I've gone through extensive testing and attempts to fix the issue, but nothing yet. It is likely hardware at this point, but I'd still like to be sure.
I've un-installed, re-installed and upgraded my drivers multiple times with no success. Most recently, I installed the original drivers for my card provided by Dell and then let Windows upgrade the drivers to 331.82. No drivers prevented the crashes. I updated my VBIOS to the most recent version as well with no luck. I've cleaned and scanned my computer with multiple anti-virus and spy/adware removal programs. Rebooting the computer with a clean boot still has crashes, so it isn't a specific services causing the problems. Changing the TDR Delay via regedit has no affect on the crashes. I tested my RAM with MemTest86 basically for the hell of it, but its perfectly fine. I also tested my video memory with Video Memory stress Test v1.7, but that also showed no errors. Lastly, I used a Win7 installation DVD to "upgrade" my OS and replace all the Windows files without having to do a complete format and re-install. Still crashes. I removed my battery and ran solely from AC power, which resulted in a crash too. I've attempted to test running only on battery, but my battery is old and barely lasts 20-30 minutes anymore, but I haven't experience a crash only on battery.
As mentioned, the crashes used to result in a BSOD with 0x116 error code, but that is not the case anymore. Now, the display will entirely shut off (i.e. no backlight even on) and will never recover like it used to, forcing me to manually reboot the computer. For the past few crashes I've tried running some GPU performance logging software to see if they could tell me anything notable. I've attached 2 logs from 2 different programs, GPU-Z and EVGA Precision, both running during the most recent crash. One shows basically everything shutting down, one shows a seemingly garbage value for most readings right before or immediately after the crash (not sure which). They're probably useless although both show that they video card isn't overheating, but here they are regardless.