Windows 7 - Windows Explorer crashes and system freezing after video card upgrade

So, I very recently graduated and as a congratulations, my brother-in-law gave me a brand new Nvidia 9800GTX for my computer. I was running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit when I installed it and I immediately saw a drastic increase in performance. However, when I turned my computer off for the night, I noticed that it would hang at the shut down screen and never actually turn off.

Refusing to believe that the new card was at fault, and having next to nothing on my C partition after my most recent formatting, I decided to go ahead and reinstall Windows to hopefully fix the issue. This is where my other problems started in. Suddenly Windows Explorer was crashing whenever I tried to use my disk drive and my system would randomly lock up. After assuming my install went wrong, I tried reinstalling twice more and neither worked.

Finally, I got fed up and reinstalled my 32-bit copy of Windows 7 Professional and it still didn't work. As of now I've removed the new card and put my old 9500GT back in to find that I'm not having a single problem with the 9500. Does anyone know of any solutions to this? I'd really love to use my new card, but it's obviously causing some pretty serious errors.

What are you using for a power supply? The 9800GTX recommends a minimum 450W supply with 2 - 6-pin connectors. It draws 140W.

The additional power being drawn by the card and the hard drive at the same time may be maxing out your power supply. If the supply is old it is not putting out its maximum rating anymore too.

You could also disconnect the power to all other components except the hard drive and video (including USB devices) and test to see if the issue goes away when drawing less power.

I'm running my system on a 500 watt power supply that is rather old, so I haven't ruled it out. The main problem seems to be occurring whenever I try to use my CD drive. I actually received a blue screen that led me to believe that the CD drive was having an IRQ conflict with the new card. I unplugged the drive and everything has been running smoothly since then. Either way, it's still very possible that it's drawing too much power, so a new power supply is seeming more and more like a good idea.

Sounds like it!

Also try plugging a different connector into the DVD drive. The connection gets loose sometimes and a condition known as "mini-arcing" can happen. Rare, but possible. Can't hurt, might help.

It may also be worth checking you have the latest driver for the new card. Usually manufacturers websites are the best place to go to download these.

Hi MorsePacific,

As to your IRQ conflict: Do you have a sound card installed? If you do, that might be your issue? I'm not sure if the issue has been resolved in Windows 7, but in prior versions of Windows, installing the OS with your sound card could create an IRQ conflict as the sound card would be given the same IRQ as the graphics card. The easy way around this is to simply install Windows without the sound card present; only install the sound card after Windows is up and running. If you do it this way, you can be assured that Windows will give the two cards their own unique IRQ.

As to your power supply: Yes, card makers recommend PSU's of a certain wattage; however, to power a modern graphics card, watts don't matter, amps are all that matters. Specifically, high amperage on the +12 volt rail... which powers most of today's modern computers. Ideally, you want high amperage on a single rail... but, whatever gets the job done, as long as it's done right, will work too. Find one that has at least 50 amps on the +12 volt rail and you'll be fine with that card.

I don't use a dedicated sound card for my system, but thank you. I was planning on trying to reconnect the drive with a different connector and a different SATA port sometime today when I find the time.