Well, I just installed a new graphics card about a week ago, to get rid of my piece of CRAP intel card. Anyway, I read the instructions that came with the card that said to uninstall the drivers I have for the card that I had. I did that, then installed my new card. Everything worked. I then installed the drivers that came with the CD. After that, I decided to test out my new card. I downloaded the Battlefield 2 demo, and installed it. The installer finished and it asked me to update my drivers if I need to. When I do, it says there are not any updated drivers for my card. So, I just play. Anyway...for the past week...some times my computer just randomly crashes and it gives me a blue screen that says the OS has shutdown, and it says if I have installed any new drivers then that may be the cause of it. After I restart my computer a screen comes up saying that windows just recovered from a serious error. This scares me because I did just install new drivers. Now, I think this is coming from the following: 1: I did install my intel drivers again, because if I didn't then dual monitors would not work for somereason, even though my new card supports it, it won't work unless it is plugged into a seperate card (is this normal?). 2: Windows update is not catching new drivers. Anyone know what is causing this? I am really getting tired of it. Chad.

What make and model of graphics card is it?

I wouldn't rely on Windows Update to find the latest drivers for your hardware, you'd be best going to the hardware vendor's site and getting the latest drivers there. If your card is a Geforce then head over to nvidia.com and for Radeons, head to ati.amd.com

Good luck,
ViLiO

Yeah, I was just about to head over to NVidia's site.

I will see if that helps, but may take a day or 2 to reply, as it really only does it once a day. Does anyone know what error I am talking about though? I actually just checked out the Blue screen of death error message, and it actually seems like that is what I am getting. As, it said on wikipedia that it can be caused by faulty drivers. When it comes to these type of error messages, I am basically lost on what to do.

I am going to check out the drivers though.


Chad.

You'd need to give the stop code and any relevant .sys files that get flagged by the BSOD for any real help regarding that. There are also tools you can get from Microsoft to analyze the MEMORY.DMP file that the BSOD produces. Chances are it is just a bug in some of the older Forcewares and upgrading to the latest ones will fix it as the drivers that come on the CDs with graphics cards are usually months out of date. A good first step for any hardware is to go straight to the website and get the latest drivers [smile]

All the best,
ViLiO

First, you absolutely should install the drivers from the NVIDIA site. Before you do that, it doesn't make much sense to try to troubleshoot the problem any more.

Second, blue screens can be caused by multiple causes:

1) A software bug in some driver (most likely the graphics driver, if it happens when you're playing games now, and didn't happen before).
2) A hardware problem with the graphics card -- a bad connector, a bad component, overheating, ...
3) A hardware problem with your motherboard that's only noticed now because of the added stress from the graphics card (bad RAM, bad solder, bad cooling, ...)
4) A hardware problem with your overall system -- usually related to a too weak power supply, or poor cooling.

If this was an "off the shelf" computer (not one you built), you may have a too weak power supply for a new graphics card. Look at the side of your power supply. If it is rated at less than 400W, it's too little for a modern graphics card, and you might have better success with a new power supply (can be had from $40 and up, assuming it's a standard ATX size). If the new graphics card is really hight end, like a GeForce 7950 or 8800, you will need more than 400W (up to 700W for a 8800 based system, I'm told).

It could also be heat related. Put a thermometer in there, and see how hot it gets. The graphics drivers will also have a GPU temperature sensor (but not a CPU temperature sensor).

Well, I thought I fixed it finally with downloading the new drivers, as it acted normal for a couple of days. I could play Battlefield 2, and among other stuff just fine. Then, today I woke up and decided to play Battlefield 2. I turned the computer on, and started playing, and about 30 minutes into the game it did the blue screen again.

Also, I have noticed that when I play a game now, the game automattically looses focus for no reason. I won't have any other windows open, and I have software that will end all the background running programs (Battlefield 2 dosen't like to run well on my brothers or even my computer without all background operations killed), and while I am playing it just looses focus and goes to windows. My mouse sometimes comes back...and sometimes does not, so every now and then I have to ALT+TAB back in.

I will check out my power supply and stuff like that soon, although that should not be it, as I have read on another forum of running this card on my EXACT computer, as my motherboard dosen't support AGP or even PCI Express. It only supports PCI. So, I did some reasearch on what people thought was the best PCI card, and most people have said a Geforce 6200, which is what that forum suggested, and they said that it could run with some of the top of line cards right now, and it runs just excellent on my computer's default hardware (except RAM, where they said 512 would be better, but I've had a gig so yea)...so I am keep on coming back to driver issue.

Thank y'all for all the help. I'll check the power supply once again, as maybe I was dumb when I read it the first time before I bought this card.

Chad.