BSOD only when playing games

Hi All,

Over the past few days I have been getting BSOD whenever playing games on my Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit rig.

I have not added any new hardware since this has started and the only new software added have been games.

When it first started I was running faily old nvidia drivers (191.xxx) for my EVGA GTX 260 so I updated to the most recent (196.21) but this hasn't helped. I tried a complete uninstall of the drivers and then a fresh install but am still getting the BSOD.

My CPU core temps are fine (approx 55 degrees celcius) and my GPU temp is at around 75 degrees celcius - both during gameplay. I am not overclocking any of my hardware - it's all running at stock.

I have run memtest and Linx and found no issues.

As can be seen from the attached crash list, the culprit drivers are nvlddmkm.sys, ntoskrnl.exe and dxgkrnl.sys (this latter one has happended once and occured when I exited a game).

The BSOD are quite random - I can play for 45 minutes before one occurs - yet when I try again it might only take 10 minutes. A few nights ago I played for a few hours and didn't receive any BSOD. I have received BSOD on two separate games so it's obviously not a game issue.

I've attached the minidumps along with a crash list generated by BlueScreenView.

Many thanks.

Thanks for the replies.

I did not perform an uninstall of the nvidia drivers with drive sweeper. I'll give that a go.

My rig is about 6 months old (the video card is 18 months old and was taken from an older rig). When I first built it I put it through stress tests and performed an overnight memtest and everything was fine. Up until a week ago it's been running smoothly - no issues whatsoever - games and general useage working absoloutly fine and then all of a sudden, whilst playing L4D2, BSOD! uninstalled the drivers, went back to older ones, and had some temporary gaming stability (I managed to play games for a few nights without BSOD), started to play a different game last night and back it came!! I then installed the latest drivers but still BSOD?? It's very strange!!?

As said, I'm only getting this when playing games.

Thanks.

If you look on windows 7 (action center > reliability monitor)
reliability graphic you will be able to click on the day you first had a problem and see what was installed around that time!

Other thing I suggest is press all cards/memory/bios chip into motherboard, press all cables into sockets wherever they are (inc wall & PSU).
As it happens when you stress your puta is cpu/fan heating up/dusty/needs fresh artic silver etc.
check psu still gives out enough power.

Hi neo,

I will check out if any updates occured during the time of failures.

As mentioned, I have reasonable CPU and GPU temps during gameplay (see my original post) so I'm convinced it isn't an overheating issue. In fact, I put my system under far more strain when I ran LinX using all the memory - even then my CPU cores stayed below 70 degrees and I didn't receive any BSOD.

What's a good programme for monitoring PSU output?

Thanks.

I think I have fixed the issue of BSOD while gaming.

Despite statements to the contrary, it appears (at least for my case) that running the nVidia uninstaller does NOT eliminate all traces of the drivers. I originally tried doing exactly this but still ended up with BSOD. So I instead booted into safe mode, ran the nvidia uninstaller and then ran driver sweeper. To my surprise, there was a bucket load of drivers/components that hadn't been uninstalled. After running driver sweeper, I also ran ccleaner on the registry - it found 80+ entires related to video drivers. I cleaned all of these up, and then removed the 'Nvidia' folder on my HD. I finished by installing the VGA driver. Rebooted, installed the latest nvidia driver and I have not since had any issues.

Cheers!

Thanks for reporting back!

As far as I remember all your previous Nvidia(ATi) drivers are each left in their respective folders within the C:\Nvidia(C:\ATi) main folder.

So yes, if you have not deleted them previously, you would find old versions of drivers.
When you are up and running with a new driver install and it runs ok after checking, after a couple of days go into C:\Nvidia and delete the old driver version folder - if it is still there!

Glad you are now sorted out - scrambled graphic drivers! :)