GTS 250 w/ Win 7 x64 Issues (please help!)

Hey guys, I'm new here. Just built my second PC ever, and the first one I did was 7 years ago, so bare with me.

My graphics card or something is crashing, and I can't figure out what's wrong. Basically, what's happening is my computer will freeze for a second, the monitor goes black for a few seconds, then everything returns to normal and I get this message in the bottom right corner:

"Display driver stopped responding and has recovered.
Display drive NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version XXX.XX stopped responding and has succesfully recovered."
(the x's are whatever driver I'm running at the time)

I started with 190.38, but have tried 190.56, 186.16 185.15, and maybe another, and am currently running 186.16.

Earlier today it was crashing about every 30-45 seconds. I figured out if I ran a non-custom or non aero-theme, specifically the high contrast white theme, it prevents the video card from crashing. But as soon as I switch back to more complex theme, it starts crashing again.

Throughout the day I was trying to install different drivers without removing the old ones by just running the .exe driver file. (guess that's not the right way to do it i've come to learn) Then new problems came up, I was getting a RunDLL error:

"Error in NVCPL.DLL
Missing entry: NvStartupFirstRunAfterInstUserAccount"

and my color would become extra vibrant in a bad way. sometimes it would be fine until i rebooted, and then it would be bad again. anyway, one of my buddies came by and stripped all the video drivers from everything, and reloaded 186.16, and all seemed well. now it's crashing again. this time, not so often, but it's still happening.

I am not doing anything crazy or anything either. Just moving around files, browsing the internet, learning the new windows, etc. No gaming or anything like that.

I'm running Windows 7 x64 7600 RTM
EVGA/Nvidia GeForce GTS 250 Superclocked Edition
Asus P6T Deluxe V2
Intel Core i7 920
6gb DDR3 Corsair RAM

Also, maybe once every 5 boots, the mouse/cursor freezes for a good 5 seconds at a time about every 20 seconds...

So I'm not sure what to do. Everytime I feel like it's finally fixed, like maybe it'll run fine for 30 mins, it starts crashing out of nowhere... I guess I won't really ask a specific question, basically just asking for help, I'll take whatever I can get!

thanks in advance guys, really appreciate it.

no one? anyone?

or anyone even heard of this happening?

cpu is 650w, i'm running one dvd burner, 3 hard drives, vid card, motherboard, cpufan, optional northbridge fan, 4 fans on the case, and that's all i can think of...

i have the pci-e cable plugged into the vid card, and i think that's all that plugs in?

would the error still refer to my display driver if it was a power thing?

thanks for the help so far...

still having this problem, but now it's combined with the mouse freezing every 2-3 seconds for a duration of 2-3 seconds, and then it works again...

i hate my life right now

thanks ken, i've been searching and reading and finding a million different theories probably because everyone's problems are different.

one thing i did last night, that seemed to have somewhat of an effect was turned down/off some of the texture stuff. after doing that, i could run the aero theme, and watch movies and tried whatever i could to get it to crash and it wouldn't. it then crashed once, so i went to put the texture settings back when i realized i forgot to turn one off. so i turned that off, and it hasn't crashed since. won't be able to know for sure till i get back home after work and mess with it.

i hate dealing with intermittent problems. knowing my luck, it'll crash only after i've decided that it's fixed. (and not a minute sooner) thanks again.

will do. i have a game plan setup for when i get home.

-try to get system to crash now that all texturing is turned off
-check to be sure mobo drivers are up to date
-install vista on another drive and see if it continues to crash
if doesn't crash in vista: ???
if vista crashes:
try different ram, one at a time
buy new gc and try
if new gc does not work, could be a motherboard problem?

any additions to list would be helpful.

wutangben said:

will do. i have a game plan setup for when i get home.

-try to get system to crash now that all texturing is turned off
-check to be sure mobo drivers are up to date
-install vista on another drive and see if it continues to crash
if doesn't crash in vista: ???
if vista crashes:
try different ram, one at a time
buy new gc and try
if new gc does not work, could be a motherboard problem?

any additions to list would be helpful.

Have you attempted to adjust any of the memory configuration adjustments in bios, like the memory voltage or timings? Sometimes the Auto settings don't get it right so doing it manually usually works better.