Good luck fixing my problem

Knetog · 23 Aug 2010

Whenever I play a game, my screen would RANDOMLY freeze for 8-10 seconds then come back to normal or crash the game, showing then "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered".

Games in which it happened:
- World of Wacraft
- Splinter Cell Conviction
- Dirt 2
- Heroes of Newerth
- Warcraft 3 - Dota
- Just Cause 2
- Starcraft 2 ( REALLY OFTEN )
- Crysis

It even happened ONCE while watching youtube video... but never did happen while watching a personal video on desktop.

Here's my computer specs:
- AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition
- OCZ XTC Platinum DDR3-1333 6GB 3x2GB CL7-7-7-20
- MSI 785GM-E65 785G mATX AM3 DDR3 PCI-E16
- Western Digital Caviar Green 500GB
- Antec Earthwatts 650W Power Supply
- Sapphire Radeon HD 5770 850MHZ 1GB 4.8GHZ GDDR5

I've read about it and it seems it could be many different problems... Thought, my cards temperature are just fine and I'm not overclocking. I've tried many times removing and re-installing video card drivers using driver sweeper. There's one big problem I noticed and it doesn't seems to get away, whenever I restart my pc, once on the desktop, windows install a radeon HD4200 driver without asking me, even thought I disabled the option to not install anything on his own... I tried removing it, but when restarting, windows would install it back. So at the moment I have both showing in display driver and have the HD4200 disabled.

Also, I don't think my bIOS is up to date and I have no idea how to update it ( which I heard there's a risk of breaking your pc not doing it properly.. )

I have been running with only 2x2 ddr3 ram since I recently heard AMD doesn't support triple channel..

I honestly don't know what the hell to do, I feel like throwing away this one in the garbage and buy a new one... Yet it was my first time going for amd and ati, ill go back to intel and nvidia next time...

Thorsen · 23 Aug 2010

The HD4200 is the on-board integrated graphics. YOu can disable this in the BIOS from recognizing the on-board before the Dedicated.

This is your mobo: MSI Global â€“ Computer, Laptop, Notebook, Desktop, Mainboard, Graphics and more

This is the integrated: Notebookcheck: ATI Radeon HD 4200

Here is a great tutorial on BIOS settings from Toms Hardware: BIOS Tuning : BIOS from A to Z
Read part 16 on linked page for setting the graphics card correctly.

Thorsen · 23 Aug 2010

A great tool for checking your specs is CPU-Z: CPUID - System & hardware benchmark, monitoring, reporting

On the Mainboard page, it will tell you what your BIOS version is. Check to see if the MSI page I linked for your mobo has a newer BIOS version and what it fixes. Don't update a BIOS unless it is necessary to fix an issue.

You should first check your BIOS settings to see if it will stop using the integrated graphics by default.

Another Note about Ram. Even though TripleChannel isn't enabled on your board, your Ram should still run at Double Channel and still use the Third stick. Sometimes this doesn't work, but sometimes, the third stick will not interfere with the performance boost of the double channel used on the other two sticks. For this to work, you need to have each stick in the right slot. But it is def. worth testing.

Knetog · 23 Aug 2010

I don't know much about computer, I've installed GPU-Z and my motherboard BIOS version is 2.3, could you see on my motherboard website you linked if any of the updates would actually fix my "display driver error" ?
As for the integrated motherboard, I just remembered the guy from a fixing pc company telling me he did but it would still show up.

Those guys told me they played games but never crashed ( played about 2-3 hours... ) thought they didn't play starcraft 2 which happens way too often...

Thorsen · 23 Aug 2010

Most recent Bios is 2.8, but 2.4-2.8 didn't show anything specific to your problem. I don't know if updating BIOS would fix it. MSI does have a utility to run it. updating is easy, its just dangerous as if you don't do it right or if something doesn't work, then you can really mess things up.

Do you know how to get into the BIOS to check the settings in the tutorial? if so, make sure they match up correctly.

You wont be able to take screenshots, but if you have a digital camera, you can take pics and post them and we will look through for anything out of place.

You can also DL the most recent Drivers for HD4200 integrated chip so that it is up to date, but I don't know if you should do from MSI or from ATI...... I will look....

Thorsen · 23 Aug 2010

Wow... MSI has lots of cool stuff on thier site:

This is for how to flash the BIOS: MSI Global â€“ Computer, Laptop, Notebook, Desktop, Mainboard, Graphics and more

Thorsen · 23 Aug 2010

Do you have ATI Catalyst Control Center? and if so what version?

Knetog · 23 Aug 2010

Sorry for not responding ealier, busy doing some stuff. After looking at the msi video tutorial, it is quite simple, but do I 100% need to update it? My catalyst control center version is 10.7 , the latest.

note: I tried installing the driver without CCC to see weither or not it was the cause and nothing changed.

Thorsen · 23 Aug 2010

I don't usually advise updating the BIOS, but in this case, I think you will benefit. Your current BIOS is pretty old. I can't say that it will 100% fix your problem, but there is a chance it will.

Knetog · 23 Aug 2010

Well this is wierd, I went into my BIOS, and I have 3 boot device, I got my first device to my USB key, rebooted and nothing happened ( normal boot ). I then disabled the 2 other and changed Yes to No for boot other device, then it said nothing could boot, reboot and change booting device. I changed it back to Yes, with only USB device in the first one, and it normaly booted.. I don't get in O.o

*i won't be able to answer back for a while, I got to go and I'll be back later.