[AniDanny]

PSU: CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16817139005

RAM: OCZ Reaper HPC 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16820227289

Motherboard: MSI P35 Neo2-FR LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813130098

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16819115037

And I'm running Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit.

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Looking at the specs you have provided I can`t see a weak link/possible culprit.
Have you tried the latest drivers from the link below;
http://www.sapphiret...1.aspx?psn=0006
Your Speedfan screenshot shows high cpu usage, what have you got running in the
background, only one fan is running, temp 3 is showing a reading of -128C which is
odd and the +5V is slightly low at 4.92V.
A Tech may want to have a look at this, so it may possibly help move things along
for you if you do the following;
Please download and run HW Monitor from here http://www.cpuid.com.../hwmonitor.html

**Installation (setup version only)

Run the setup executable file, and let it guide you for the installation process.
The setup installs a service, that is started the first time that you run HWMonitor.
Please post a screenshot of the sensor readings.
**Instructions courtesy of rshaffer61

[phillpower2]

Looking at the specs you have provided I can`t see a weak link/possible culprit.
Have you tried the latest drivers from the link below;
http://www.sapphiret...1.aspx?psn=0006
Your Speedfan screenshot shows high cpu usage, what have you got running in the
background, only one fan is running, temp 3 is showing a reading of -128C which is
odd and the +5V is slightly low at 4.92V.
A Tech may want to have a look at this, so it may possibly help move things along
for you if you do the following;
Please download and run HW Monitor from here http://www.cpuid.com.../hwmonitor.html

**Installation (setup version only)

Run the setup executable file, and let it guide you for the installation process.
The setup installs a service, that is started the first time that you run HWMonitor.
Please post a screenshot of the sensor readings.
**Instructions courtesy of rshaffer61

[AniDanny]

I was playing a flash game when I took the speedfan recording, so firefox.exe and plugin-container.exe were both eating up a good bit of my CPU.

That page lists dozens of various drivers - I'm guessing I only need "Catalyst V10.8 for Windows 7 64-bit Edition"? Or do I also need "Catalyst 10.8 Xcode for Windows 7 64-bit Edition"?

Already had HWMonitor installed, conveniently enough.

[AniDanny]

And I forgot to click "attach". >.>;

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[phillpower2]

On the drivers list I would say numbers 1 and 4.
How many case fans do you have as again HW monitor is only showing 1 working.

[AniDanny]

I've got three case fans: two in front and a big one on the top ( http://www.newegg.co...N82E16811129021 )

[AniDanny]

Also, since I can't remember if this has screwed things up in the past: should I uninstall my current video drivers before installing the new ones? Or should the new ones automatically overwrite the old ones?

[Welshhobo]

Ok here are the probable culprits:

Overheating
Lack of power
Out of date driver
Botnet leaching your processing power.

If its overheating, download speedfan to check your temperatures (just google it and it should be one of the first links), an average temperature for a GPU is anywhere between 40 and 65 degrees celcius. If its above that, then its time to clean out your computer with compressed air and invest in some thermal paste.

It could also be that not enough power is reaching your GPU, post what wattage your power supply is if known, if its 500W or higher then it should be fine, and you could probably get away with around 400W.

Go to ATI's website and download the latest driver for your graphics card, then test to see if it works better.

Alot (and i mean ALOT) of computers have botnets on them which leech alot of processing power and internet speed. If you close all non-vital programs down (like MSN, Skype, Winamp etc...), and Speedfan detects alot of CPU activity, then youve probably got a botnet on your computer. The only way to 100% get rid of a botnet is to save all your files to an external hard drive and reformat.


The last thing i can think of is that your GPU simply cannot run those games and youll need to buy a better one.

Edited by Welshhobo, 11 September 2010 - 06:21 AM.

[AniDanny]

Speedfan and HWMonitor both agree that I'm running at/under 50C.

My PSU is 650W - I got this one specifically so lack of power would never be an issue.

I've updated the drivers several times, and it's never done anything. In the process of trying again, but I'm not very hopeful.

My CPU's usually 0-5% usage when everything else is shut down. Add to that the fact that these problems have persisted through several reformats, so it's probably not a botnet.

Lastly - I've been through four video cards now (two of this one and two EVGA GeForce 8800GTs) and they've all had similar problems. In addition, it crashes while running simple games (such as Indigo Prophecy, Braid, and ePSXe) at absolute minimum settings, so it can't be an issue of the games being too graphics intensive for the cards.


^^^ Because I've eliminated all of those as potential problems, I really think it's either the motherboard or the RAM causing the problem. But it'd cost me $200 or so to replace either, and I don't want to spend that kind of money if it's not guaranteed to fix the problem.

[AniDanny]

Just tried installing the new drivers, and ran into the same problem I had two months ago:
"The Catalyst Control Center is not supported by the driver version of your enabled graphics adapter. Please update your ATI graphics driver, or enable your ATI adapter using the Displays Manager." (I don't know what the 'Displays Manager' is, nor how to enable my ATI adapter with it)

And upon installation, it gave me an installation log that was very similar to my last one, so I'm going to rollback my drivers for the time being:



-UI
09/11/10 01:48:21
install




ATI Radeon Graphics Processor
ATI Technologies Inc

0x68b8
0x1002
0x2543
0x1002
0x030000
0x00



ATI Technologies Inc

0xaa58
0x1002
0xaa58
0x1002
0x040300
0x00




Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable

9.0.30729.4148
7




Catalyst Control Center
Succeed
2010.0803.2125.36577
150


ATI Catalyst Install Manager
Succeed
3.0.786.0
20


ATI Display Driver
Fail
8.762.0.0000
90


HDMI/DP Audio Driver
Succeed
7.11.0.7708
1







Hardware information
Existing packages
Packages for install
Packages for uninstall
Other detected devices
Error messages
Name
Manufacturer
Chip type
Device ID
Other hardware
Download packages
Success
Fail
Vendor ID
Class Code
Revision ID
Subsystem ID
Subsystem vendor ID
Catalyst™ Install Manager
Installation Report
Final Status:
Version of Item:
Size:
Mbytes

Driver Install: the installation failed

[phillpower2]

Lastly - I've been through four video cards now (two of this one and two EVGA GeForce 8800GTs) and they've all had similar problems.

Was the Ram you are using now in the board when you had issues with the previous cards?
I suggest testing the Ram using Memtest86+ from here http://www.memtest.org/
And here is a link on how to use memtest86+ http://www.geekstogo...sing-memtest86/
If the Ram passes the testing I would lean towards a MB issue or an outside chance the OS drivers conflicting
with the video card, this is less likely because you have also tried Nvidea cards but had the same issue.
A couple of other suggestions I can make, download and install individually the driver that failed to install
http://sites.amd.com...on-win7-64.aspx
Leave the side of the case whilst the computer is on and in use to check all of the fans are working, and finally as a last resort check for BIOS updates for the MB and look particularly for anything that mentions graphics issues.

[Welshhobo]

The Display Manager is either the software that came in that package (and probably has an 'look for updates' button or its referring to your device manager. Try finding an "update driver" button or something in the Catalyst Software Suite. Also, try using Windows Update - do it manually and look for optional updates, if there is one for your graphics driver then update it.

Otherwise, have you uninstalled the driver completely by going to My Computer > Manage > Device Manager > Display Drivers?. If your cards name is visible but has a yellow exclamation mark on it, then i means that your computer recognizes it but can't use it properly. If it is under "unknown devices" then it isn't recognized.

If it is visible, then uninstall the driver by right-clicking on it and clicking uninstall. To ensure youve gotten rid of drivers that youve installed wrongly and could be causing problems - in the Device Manager, click "View" and select "view hidden devices" and uninstall every display adapater driver you find. Then install it again, and restart your computer. If it doesn't recognize it at all and youve installed the driver for it, then you may have installed the wrong driver. If your convinced its the correct driver,uninstall it. The device should now go to "unknown device". Right click and select "Update Driver Software" and let windows find you a compatible driver.

Remember - restarting can refresh things so its encouraged to do it as much as possible.

If youve removed all older drivers, tried the companies driver and the driver windows suggested and it still hasn't worked, then you definatley eliminate a driver problem.

Edited by Welshhobo, 11 September 2010 - 06:42 AM.

[AniDanny]

I ran memtest, both sticks got to 100% without any trouble.

I tried downloading just the driver and not the package. The package gave me 3/4 items successfully installed. With this, I just got 0/1 items successfully installed. -_-

Also: when I uninstalled the drivers, the display drivers list had "default video adapter" or something to that effect. "Unknown device" never showed up.

I tried Windows update and it found a driver for it, and then when I installed it, it said that the update was not successful and gave error code 80200053, which is apparently lack of Windows Validation. I've already activated Windows 7, but tried it again just to be sure (and got the same result).

Found a Windows FixIt to fix this. Installed. Ran. That error is gone, and is now replaced by error code C80003FA. Which is apparently just caused by a bad connection, and eventually went away. Trying to update again...

Awww, and it almost looked like it was going to work too. Error code 8007054F this time. Google's not giving me answers on what causes that one... Giving up and doing a system restore.

Aaaand my manual restore point gave me an error message, then the system restore program crashed, with the reason "catastrophic failure". Restored to an automatic point from a couple days earlier and I'm back to where I was.



Also, since I don't think I specified before: I used the 8800GTs on Windows XP, and have used the Radeon 5770s on Windows XP and then upgraded to Windows 7 Pro and the problems persisted. So I doubt it's an issue of OS drivers.

[phillpower2]

Im running out of ideas here as we seem to have done as much testing as we can.
Things we havn`t tried, swap out the psu for a known good one, can you do this,
check all case fans are working, update to the latest BIOS for the MB.
I notice that the specs for your MB say that it is certified for Vista, I hope
that is not the reason you are having issues ie it doesn`t like any other OS,
checking for a BIOS update that addresses issues like yours may confirm this.

[AniDanny]

New and exciting failures!

I checked google to see if there was a solution to the "[video driver] has stopped responding and successfully recovered" message I keep getting. There's apparently a fix for Windows Vista, but the only known solution for Windows 7 is to have only one RAM card inserted. So I took out the second card, and booted it up. Everything happened exactly as usual - the game crashed and I got the same error message. So I turned the computer off, put the RAM back in, and tried to start it up. It sputtered a few times (the lights on the case came on, the drives whirred up... then the lights shut off and the drives whirred down), then it started and everything was running stably, except the monitor wouldn't show anything.

I thought it might just be an issue with my monitor, but the first thing on my desktop to start up is AIM, and I'm not logged on, so I'm fairly certain the computer's not able to start up at all. I'm suspecting more and more that it's a faulty power supply. I'll see if I can find someone with a known working one and borrow that. In the meantime, any additional advice is always welcome.