Solved INVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS card crashing, some Qs b4 I update driver?

[Nurann]

Hi,

I've been running Windows 7 after upgrading from Vista for a couple of months without any problems. The compatibility program keeps giving me the all clear, but for the past week my graphics card has been spontaneously crashing when I go to play Minecraft and Bejeweled 3. The first two times it recovered and I couldn't seem to track down an error report to find out why; tonight when I opened up Bejeweled I had to manually shut the laptop down as the screen glitched and froze (the image started to break up into bars and then locked completely). It's now crashed twice in one night on games I seemed to be able to run previously without much issue (well, minecraft is its own monster, but Bejeweled has never done this to me before! ). I've been surfing the forums and it looks like there have been very similar issues with the card and Windows 7, but all the related posts are well over a year old and don't quite seem to match up. I'm creating a backup and am prepared to try and update the driver as one old thread suggested, but I wanted to get some current feedback first.

I am running Windows 7 32 bit home premium on a Dell Inspiron 1420 notebook; a Core2 Duo 1.80GHz processor; 2GM memory; (A10?) BIOS; INVIDIA GeForce 8400m GS driver version 8.15.11.8621.

- If anyone has recently had this model of card crash on them, did a driver update fix the problem? (I ask because a similar old thread said the update seemed to make it worse, but that user was having some other symptoms my laptop hasn't shown... yet... )
- What is the best place/way to do a driver update? I have the NVIDIA webpage for Verde 280.26 Driver open, still not sure if it's the right one to be going ahead with though @_@ (http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook-win7-winvista-280.26-whql-driver.html)
- any other suggestions or recommendations?

Thanks for any feedback you can give me!!!

 

[Corazon]

While a driver update might work, I don't think this is the real cause of the problem...it sounds like a hardware failure to me, most likely due to overheating. Does the card have a fan, if so, can you open up your machine and check that the fan is still running?

Doh, just noticed it's a laptop (mobile chipset). You could use monitoring tools such as SpeedFan or one of my favorite Windows sidebar gadgets called GPU Observer to check the temperature.

Anyway, the driver you're looking at is the correct one and it's not a bad idea to update - just be on the safe side and make a backup or restore point first.

 

[Nurann]

Unfortunatley, you were correct. I didn't get a chance to try your suggestions though; when I went back an hour later to check on the progress of the backups, something burned out completly. I can't even get it to boot up now. The screen starts up with verticle lines burned in to it. After a few seconds the lines become a bright neon green, but that's the only change. Next stop... Laptop repair store, and then maybe future shop... X/

 

[Corazon]

Sorry to hear Hope you get a replacement soon...