Solved Win 7 freezing randomly. Possible video card/driver problem?

[TheGreen]

Had no issues for a long time then started to have some freezing and crashing to desktop problems with video games (The Witcher, Guild Wars 2, etc.) as well as Nvidia drivers failing and then recovering (causing the video in games to freeze and Firefox to turn all white).

Eventually I decided to get a new video card (went from a GTX 660 to a MSI R9 290) and a new 750 watt psu for the new card (Corsair CX750M). I uninstalled all Nvidia drivers and installed the latest drivers from AMD.

Now I along with the other problems I also have the problem of the computer freezing at (as far as I can tell) random times. My only recourse is to restart at that point. The freezing occurs between 3 minutes and 1/2 hour from start up.

Have done/tried the below:
I do not over clock.
I have checked my RAM with Memtest86+ and it passes with flying colors.
Checked RAM timings in the BIOS. They were fine.
I have updated my BIOS (no freezing for 30 minutes made me think that was it....then it started freezing again).
Tried installing earlier drivers for the R9 290.
I have done an 'upgrade' to Win7 to see if that would fix the issue. I would like to avoid a clean install if at all possible.
I have looked at temperatures and see no issues. At the last crash, while watching a youtube video:
CPU - 35 C
Motherboard - 27 C
GPU - 40 C
Hard drives - 37 C, 34 C, 35 C

When in safe mode or when the AMD drivers are uninstalled and it is running off the motherboard default drivers there are no issues.

My computer:
OS:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1
CPU:
AMD Phenom II X4 965
Motherboard:
ASUSTeK Computer INC. M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 (AM3)
RAM:
8.00GB( 4 x 2GB) Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 669MHz (9-9-9-24) Crucial Ballistic Sport
Graphics:
S230HL (1920x1080@60Hz) (Default mother board video)
MSI 4096MB ATI AMD Radeon R9 200 Series (MSI)

Anything more you need to know?
What is the issue? This is driving me NUTS! It froze halfway through me writing this.

 

[TheGreen]

Well thanks for all the help and support...... :-/

For anyone experiencing something similar; my problem was that the PCIe slot that the video card was plugged into was bad / damaged. When I plugged the card into the other PCIe x16 slot everything worked fine.

So there you go. I guess not everything is a software issue.

 

[BugMeister]

I'm not surprised..
some of these newer cards a really big (and heavy!)
they need to be securely attached to their relevant PCI-e slot


- sometimes they get loosened, especially if your moving your rig around..