driver conflict with XP: possibly video? but certified.. exact conflict unknown

[seth thomas rasmussen]

even after recently reformatting my HD and starting fresh,
i am having an old problem. the problem is this:

it seems to be only when playing video games that require
more intense 3D accelleration, that my computer will
sometimes randomly restart. upon reentering windows, the
error reporting website would tell me it seems to be a
conflict with drivers. nothing more specific is offered.

after it first happened, i found out i had a virus. i since
got rid of the virus. but the problem is happening again.

another important note: a few times, the problem has been
accompanied by briefly displaying a blue screen with white
text that starts out something like, "the system has
encountered a serious problem." the screen displays for
such a short period of time, that i've never been able to
read the full text.

has anybody else encountered this, and do you know where i
might solve this problem?

technical notes:
-my video drivers are WHQL certified, and this problem
happened before i had these specific drivers, yet the
problem still seems only to occur while playing games.

please help. this is most frustrating. feel free to send
replies to (e-mail address removed) as well. thanks.

seth

 

[Michael Solomon \(MS-MVP Windows Shell/User\)]

If your system is clear of viruses, open Control Panel, open System, go to
the Advanced tab, click Settings under Startup and Recovery, remove the
check from "Automatically Restart" under System Failure. This will cause
the system to blue screen instead of restarting on errors and the
information on the blue screen may give a clue as to the source of the
issue.

Open Control Panel, open Administrative Tools, open Event Viewer, look for
errors corresponding to the crash, double click the error, the information
contained within may give a clue as to the
source of the problem.

Assuming you have an XP CD and not a recovery CD, place the XP CD in the
drive, when the setup screen appears, select "Check System Compatibility,"
the report it generates may point to problem hardware or software on your
system. If you do not have an XP CD, you can download this application
known as the Upgrade Advisor from the following site:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/howtobuy/upgrading/advisor.asp
Note: If you have access to a broadband connection it might be best to
download using that as this is a rather large download.

Check for the latest drivers for your hardware, especially your graphics
card and soundcard and all peripherals connected to your system. No not use
Windows Update for this, go to the device manufacturer's web sites and if
you install updated drivers, ignore the message about drivers being unsigned
by Microsoft.

 

[seth thomas rasmussen]

thank you very much for your help. i will post back once
i've tried all this.

seth

 

[Michael Solomon \(MS-MVP Windows Shell/User\)]

You're welcome, good luck.

 

[Guest]

i got the blue screen with the message again, and thanks to
your tip, i was able to read it. it appears the conflict is
with "nv4disp.dll" which i would presume is one of the
nvidia drivers. upon returning to windows, the error report
analysis couldn't offer anything other than saying "this
error is being investigated at this time."

these drivers are supposedly WHQL certified..

 

[Lars]

I have recently installed XP Pro clean on a new system.
The random restarts began even during Windows installation
with the same STOP: <message>. After some research it
appears that I needed to install the chipset drivers for
the motherboard. But doing that caused the system to be
unable to boot. So I started over and installed the
chipset drivers one at a time. The one that made the
system burp was the SMBus driver. I have been unable to go
forward or backward from this point. The drivers are
correct for the chipset and the latest version. I am
stumped at this point.

Hope this helps.
Lars

 

[Michael Solomon \(MS-MVP Windows Shell/User\)]

Yes, this is an nVidia driver. If you've recently updated the drivers for
your graphics card, I suggest you rollback the previous version. If you
haven't updated lately, I suggest you check the nVidia site for recent
updates.

 

[Michael Solomon \(MS-MVP Windows Shell/User\)]

Contact the motherboard manufacturer tech support.

 

[Guest]

i believe the old drivers caused other video issues as well. :\

 

[Michael Solomon \(MS-MVP Windows Shell/User\)]

Then you either need to change the card or contact nVidia for help with this
issue.