Lately, I started getting the blue screen of death while playing games, or the games would simpy crash, and after the computer re-booted or the game was closed with the task manager, I would get a message telling me that my display drivers stopped working. It wasn't happening too often, but I still couldn't figure it out. This morning, I fired FSX up, and now within moments, I either get the blue screen of death, or FSX goes blank, crashes, and I get the message telling me that the display drivers stopped working.

I used driver sweep to uninstall the video card drivers, and then downloaded the current drivers for my video card. But it seems to be getting worse, and not only can I not play games, but it's constantly crashing now. It's now crashing to the blue screen of death at windows start up.

I havn't made any changes to my system lately, so i'm not sure what is causing this. Any ideas? I'm now desperate

I can boot up into safe mode, uninstall the drivers, reboot into safe mode, and install the drivers, but It hasn't fixed anything

I can sometimes boot up into windows, but it is still extremily unstable

I originally had the 160 series drivers installed, so I installed the 180.48 drivers, and I am still having problems. I'll try the 178.24 driver and see what happens

Hmmmmm

I would suspect either the card needs to be reseated in the tower slot or some other kind of hardware/driver conflict glitch.

Any BIOS settings changed lately?

Anything added lately that may have video attached to it such as DVD player software, etc?

I would uninstall the drivers clean.. then shut down unplug and open the tower.. remove and reseat the card.. (clean it while you have it out) then this time install the drivers IN Windows, reboot.. wait about 2 minutes then reboot again and set up the drivers

see what happens

Quote:


No luck. I unistalled the drivers from the control panel and used driver sweep  to uninstall. I then removed the card from the computer, blew all the dust out, and re-installed it. I loaded windows, and it installed some drivers of it's own, and restarted the system. I then re-installed the nvidia drivers, restarted, and it's still not working right

It's not just FSX. Any 3d program I run crashes the computer. Even windows is very unstable. Windows flicker, turn different colors, weird stuff happens, and it crashes randomly for no apparent reason

Would you recommend me taking my computer to a PC Repair shop and have them troubleshoot it?

Well, I took it to a shop today, so we'll see what they find. Thanks for your help Nick...

actually.. the 280 would be needed to equal (and slightly better) the 8800GTX Ultra at the very least



http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130368

Its the same card.. just the 285 is a die shrink

you must have a 6 and 8 pin PSU connector..  usually the card comes with an adapter but you must make sure the PCIe plugs those adapters plug into are on separate rails to ensure 100% power to the card

Single rail PSU's like what I suggest (PC Power & Cooling) dont need to worry about that

PSU will need to be good to run one of those as they do suck a bit more power than the 8800

The 8 pin is either the plug you seek or its designed for the 8 pin Quad processor power on the motherboard

The new video cards have a 6pin and a 8pin PCIe power output. The 8pin plug off the PSU for the quad CPU power input will not work in its place..  

I cant tell what you have there for sure without seeing the unit and its wiring diagram

2 different rails means the 6pin and the 8pin plugs would pull power from 2 different voltage regulators in the PSU to ensure they each get all the power they need. Most PSU's that have a 6 and 8pin plug off the PSU for the video card are designed like that but some older units that do not have the 8pin plug must use an adapter in which the user must make sure they pull power for the adapter from the right lines or they can underpower the card without realizing it.

If you post the PSU make and model number I can try and look it up to see if there is a layout diagram

More than likely the PSU has the plugs you need from the description thus far. PCIe is 6pin however if the PSU is designed for SLi or Crossfire it would most likely have at minimum 2 6pin and 2 8pin PCIe power plugs

BFMF wrote on Jan 16^th, 2009 at 1:09am:



Wait a minute

You said you had a GTX Ultra 8800..   doesnt that take 2 6pin PCIe plugs?

Why would you use an adapter off of a 8pin when the PSU supplies the 2 PCIe 6pin plugs?

NickN wrote on Jan 16^th, 2009 at 1:20am:


No idea why it was done that way. But I did find the 6 pin connector cables in a box.

I did some searching, and actually found the box for the PSU, which was buried away in storage.

On the box it says, "Supports two 8-pin PCI-E and two 6-pin PCI-E connectors for next generation video cards."

Got it... http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/Product.aspx?C=1264&ID=1503


its a different 850

you are all set

the PCIe 8pin is RED, not black..


jeeze that had me on edge.. I was going to say I think I know why the Ultra went bad..

LOL

BFMF wrote on Jan 16^th, 2009 at 1:55am:




hard to say... if you were not clocking the ultra it will be more .. if you clock the 2xx a bit it would be a nice boost

Dont expect miracles though.. its a shame but these newer cards are shader rendering engine designed and FSX is unfortunately a year 2004 old time triangle rendering engine. The newer cards like the 2xx and the ATi are being geared for games like Crysis and other new releases so the horsepower part that FSX needs gets very little change in ability