Hello G2G
My rig has been running pretty okay for quite some time, but in the past 4-6 weeks the situation has been slowly degrading to a grinding halt as of last night when SHTF finally. Performance started to drop in applications and my PC would crash when running demanding games so I stopped playing them. Last night, I couldn't even play League of Legends on the bare minimum settings for 5 minutes without a crash, half the times it'd recover with a message from the systray saying nVidia driver 3.35 such and such has recovered, other half I'd just get a forced restart. I tried updating the GPU driver via windows update, but there seemed to be literally zero influence or change afterwards.
This morning I cleaned my PC as quite a bit of dust had built up and thought maybe that was the culprit. Turns out I can't even boot up any more, just get a loop of restarts. First time after getting everything hooked back up I got a BSOD but I can't recreate the blue screen to record the error. I can only get things functional by running in safe mode with networking (which is where I am posting to you from). It sounds like a driver issue but a slow degredation over time suggests a hardware issue, right? I honestly don't know. I've been mostly clean on my MWB scans for over a year but I guess I couldn't totally rule out malware as a problem since I don't scan ultra deep or anything. I know the first step I have to do is isolate and identify the issue but I'm really not too sure where to start with this and there's a ton of misinformation on the net. Please help!
Anyways, the graphics card in question is a Zotac GTX 560 ti. I'll compile a list of stuff I've done/researched prior to posting here:
- Basics like CCleaner, malware scans, registry cleaner, a few useless microsoft/windows hardware scans http://puu.sh/dwgbd/5a93604164.png
- Cleaned out all the dust
- System specs: http://puu.sh/dwBZ8/a53845342f.png
- Here's a screenshot of the recurring crash report from last night displaying the un-updated driver: http://puu.sh/dvkcW/45a905ca68.png
- https://support.micr....com/kb/3024777 I know that this was a thing, but I don't have KB3004394. Just figured it was worth bringing windows updates into consideration maybe?
EDIT 2: Since I can get into windows with a regular boot now, here's a list of my most recent windows updates: http://puu.sh/dww7W/0817e1d8e7.png the optional 12/15 GPU update is the one that seemed to have no effect (similar to the currently updated driver on a fresh install) last night. - http://www.pcmech.co...rd-might-dying/ Downloaded Furmark from here but I am hesitant to run it. It's also worth noting that prior to crashing, I'd 100% of the time get a short spasm of artifacting just before it would try to recover or restart.
- EDIT 2: sfc /scannow http://puu.sh/dwxb5/6f0fd78d7c.png
I think that's everything. I'm considering doing the whole msconfig/disable all services thing but am not sure if it's relevant to my problem. Let me know what you think and how I should start trying to fix this. I haven't tried doing a normal boot with onboard GFX and removing the card, but I'm 99.9999% sure it would work. I also considered putting on some new thermal while cleaning but temperatures have never really been an issue. If I make any changes or try something else I'll make a note of it in the OP.
Thank you in advance.
EDIT: Tried to run DDU to remove all GPU drivers on the system and install the newest one fresh and this was the result http://puu.sh/dwo9V/520f9973bd.png
EDIT 2: Reseated the GPU, ran sfc /scannow, ran ComboFix, ran FRST, then ran DDU again in safe mode and it worked - deleted all AMD and nVidia drivers, restarted PC with internet off & installed newest driver, here was the result after the final restart and opening the client to test a game (not even in the game yet, just opened the launcher): http://puu.sh/dwv6M/bb6eb20896.png From someone ignorant like me on the outside looking in, I think it has to be a conflict with some sort of other drvier, windows update, software, or failing hardware. Maybe the card is failing to use/apply the driver properly and that type of error code is the only way it knows how to show something is wrong? IDK. I'll try disabling the services from msconfig tomorrow morning since that is more suspect now. I'll look around for some sort of video card diagnostic in the meantime
EDIT 3: Ok, I found a decent diagnostic named GPUZ. Here are the results after running stuff randomly for a few minutes: http://puu.sh/dwxxL/b0322f66d1.jpg the screen blacked out and I got the Windows Kernel Error Driver systray message after the fan speed hit 0 and the GPU load spiked to over 99%. I attached a .txt of the raw data
gpuz log number one.txt 76.87KB
191 downloads if anyone is interested, I have found the problem in action but no idea how to interpret it yet (open the log with notepad otherwise it's ineligible). In the log you see the GPU load spike REALLY FAST over a few seconds straight to 99 then go back to normal. It'd be really easy to blame it on the PSU or temperatures getting too high but you can see that temps are stable and there are no voltage drops. I am officially stumped!
Edited by Oniketsoku, 15 December 2014 - 10:27 PM.