Random BSOD when playing games, persistant BSOD with Starcraft 2

[Haze]

Short version: My PC is getting a BSOD at random times when full screen gaming. The BSOD screen says the video card times out.

Long Version:
I have a gaming PC that a friend generously gave me when he built a new one. It's worked great, but in November the Tagan ITZ 700 watt power supply died. He had planned to do SLI and never did, so during Neweggs holiday sale I picked up a Corsair Enthusiast Series TX650 thinking it should be sufficient.

Everything has run smoothly with the new PSU except for the fact that when playing games like Torchlight 2 and Starcraft 2, my machine will BSOD. I had random BSOD's with Starcraft 2 and then suddenly had 4 nights in a row with no problems and then today it keeps crashing at the same spot in the campaign. There is little consistency to the crashes other than that and under normal operations, like email, web browsing, etc, it has only BSOD'd once and that was during a youtube video.

My first thought is that the one thing that has changed recently is the PSU and prior to that I only recall a rare crash here and there. I thought maybe my new PSU wasn't good enough, but everything I've read online about the requirements for the GTX 460, including the manual, say 450 watt minimum and I exceed that.

Here is a list of things I have tried:

- Updated video card and mobo drivers, I have also uninstalled the nvidia drivers, run Driver Sweeper in safe mode, and reinstalled drivers in normal mode.
- Ran GPU-Z to look at temperatures and ran OCCT to stress test the GPU and GPU Ram
- Ran memtest86+ for 12 hours, 8 passes
- Tried running the video card in another PCI-E slot
- Tried running games at lower graphical settings with no success
- Currently running Driver Verifier. I'm maybe 10 hours in and plan to let it run 24-36. So far it hasn't caused a BSOD
- I also found a link talking about the TDR errors with Windows 7 and added 6 items to the registry that were supposed to help give the video card 60 seconds to catch up, but Starcraft 2 still froze up, so I have since removed the registry items I added.
- Run error-checking via Windows 7 on both HDD
- I have not done any overclocking. I think my video card comes with some overclocked settings but in the bios the clock speed is the lowest it can go.

That's all I can think of right now, hope I didn't forget anything. Any help is most appreciated. Attached is the SF Diagnostic zip. I have Bluescreen Viewer installed, just not sure what the best way is to post it. I only have 4 mini dumps right now because when I installed CCleaner it removed them. All 4 dumps were from trying to play the mission Supernova in Starcraft 2. I have since uninstalled CCleaner for now to be sure I keep the minidumps intact.

 

[Arc]

Hello Haze.

Click Start.
In the search bar, Typr "services.msc" without quotes.
Click the resulting link.
When the windoe will appear, scroll down to "nvidea update service daemon"
Then do it:

Does it change the situation anyhow? Let us know.

 

[Haze]

Should I reboot after I make the change? Thanks for the quick reply. I'm about to go to bed but I'll make the change in the morning and let you know how it goes.

 

[Arc]

Should I reboot after I make the change?

Yes.

 

[Haze]

Ok I diasabled Nvidia update service daemon and rebooted. I loaded up Starcraft 2 because that one mission consistently causes the BSOD. It let me play for about a minute more than I usually play for, and then the BSOD hit.

 

[Arc]

First, roll back the display driver.

• Download and install Driver Fusion.
• Reboot the computer in Advanced Boot Options, safe mode. Search Driver Fusion in your start menu, and remove all components of your nVidia display driver.
• Boot normally now. Go to Drivers - Download NVIDIA Drivers, Drivers > Beta and Legacy; search there with your cards particulars for GeForce 306.23 Driver, dated 13.9.2012 and install it.

Then stress test the Graphics Card using Furmark.
Video Card - Stress Test with Furmark


Let us know the results.

 

[Haze]

I have done all of the above except that when I launch Furmark and click the option to Log GPU temperature, Furmark stops working and crashes. Should I try and run Furmark without the log or is that the data you need?

Not sure it it matters but when I ran Driver Fusion it did remove the nvidia drivers, but mentioned some registry items could not be removed without having Driver Fusion Premium version.

 

[Arc]

You may try some earlier versions of furmark, the latest one sometimes behaves in this way you mentioned. Otherwise, you may not ask for the data log, just observe it.

Clean the display driver as far as the driver fusion works, that will be enough.

 

[Haze]

Ok I tried several older versions of Furmark, but they all crashed when trying to enable to log so I installed the latest version and watched it run. Wasn't sure how long I should go, but after 5 minutes the temp stabilized at 74-75C after 2400 frames. No crash.

 

[Arc]

OK. If there is any further crash,, let us see the dump. And, how old the graphics card is?

 

[Haze]

Well it didn't crash during the test, it still crashes randomly when gaming and always crashes at the same point in Starcraft 2.

The video card was bought in July 2010.

 

[Arc]

You may change some texture, priority etc settings of the game to medium or even low. Sometimes the older cards are not always able to render the needed graphics load, and that might be the causeof the crash.

 

[Haze]

The game a is few years old, just like the card, and in the game settings defaults to Ultra. I went ahead and turned them to low and loaded up the mission that crashes. It let me play for a minute longer than normal before I got a BSOD.

Any other thoughts on what I can try? I'm getting to a point where I wonder if I should just format C: and start all over with this machine since I can't seem to narrow down a hardware issue.