Constant Driver Crash, No Display Signal, BSOD... The List Goes On

[alanp1995]

Thanks for coming to my post. This will be quiet a lot to take in but I'm sure there's someone out there who can solve this and point the problem out to me. 

 

So I bought a Dell Optiplex 7010 with an i5-3470 and 8GB Ram. I swapped the PSU out for a Silverstone Strider 700W PSU and added in an MSI GTX 770, that was all plain sailing.

 

The problems started happening right off the bat, at first there was no display signal on the monitor at all. I would turn on the switch on the PSU and the computer would power on without me even pressing the power button. Then if I'd switch the power supply off the computer fans would still spin up for a second without any power source.

 

I did a little research and did a NVRAM, BIOS and CMOS reset to ensure everything was at its default state. I managed to get a signal on the monitor after this but it is still not displaying sometimes. The boot time was really sluggish, definitely over a minute long, I have a 500GB Seagate HDD. Of course the first thing I did once booted was download Nvidia's graphics driver for the GTX 770, that's when stuff got really bad. 

 

After installing the latest drivers the desktop was freezing every few seconds, the mouse was not movable and then the PC would just shut itself off without warning. Then on that first reboot after driver installation, if I am lucky enough to get a signal, windows would boot and I get a constant message saying that the display driver has crashed and successfully restarted, I would be completely spammed with this notification. The computer would be unusable and turn itself off again. Next reboot would display a BSOD saying "Video TDR Failure nvlddmkm.sys". There is nothing I can do now, Windows just won't boot or allow any graphics drivers to be installed. Still, without the drivers installed it's still hit or miss it'll even display a signal.

 

I have attached some images showing some display on the monitor.

 

Any help or input at all is greatly appreciated. Thanks ☺

[NelizMastr]

Looks like a dead GPU to me. It all fits. The only way to know for sure it to test that card in another PC and another Nvidia card in your Optiplex (ideally. part 1 is not optional).

[emosun]

I'd say that gpu is toast , whoever sold it probably knew it.

The only thing i can think of is if it's in the wrong slot , or if maybe it's heatsink isn't touching the gpu at all perhaps

[alanp1995]

4 minutes ago, NelizMastr said:

Looks like a dead GPU to me. It all fits. The only way to know for sure it to test that card in another PC and another Nvidia card in your Optiplex (ideally. part 1 is not optional).

I partly guessed it was the GPU. I don't have another PC I can test it in but I am on the lookout for another used card, might go with a 1050Ti this time as I'd be guaranteed longevity as its much newer.

 

4 minutes ago, emosun said:

I'd say that gpu is toast , whoever sold it probably knew it.

The only thing i can think of is if it's in the wrong slot , or if maybe it's heatsink isn't touching the gpu at all perhaps

Luckily the guy who sold it to me refunded me and allowed me to keep the card so I assume he knew it was toast yeah. I might just try and take it apart at this stage and put it all back together, can't do more harm really.

[emosun]

2 minutes ago, alanp1995 said:

can't do more harm really.

unless the card works fine in another machine and it's your pc at fault

[alanp1995]

9 minutes ago, emosun said:

unless the card works fine in another machine and it's your pc at fault

How can I test that the rest of the machine is fine and the card is at fault? I don't have another computer to put the 770 into.

[emosun]

1 minute ago, alanp1995 said:

I don't have another computer to put the 770 into.

well thats how you would test the 770 lol

[alanp1995]

1 hour ago, NelizMastr said:

Looks like a dead GPU to me. It all fits. The only way to know for sure it to test that card in another PC and another Nvidia card in your Optiplex (ideally. part 1 is not optional).

 

53 minutes ago, emosun said:

well thats how you would test the 770 lol

The thing that confuses me the most is the GPU works completely fine when booting and using Windows once the graphics drivers are not installed. I booted into safe mode and I uninstalled them and now it works fine, but obviously this is not ideal.

[NelizMastr]

22 minutes ago, alanp1995 said:

The thing that confuses me the most is the GPU works completely fine when booting and using Windows once the graphics drivers are not installed. I booted into safe mode and I uninstalled them and now it works fine, but obviously this is not ideal.

The GPU doesn't really do anything without drivers. It's just a basic fallback mode.

[emosun]

the only thing you MIGHT try that can cost 0$ is install windows 7 onto a spare hdd and then try the gpu and drivers with that os instead. would help to know if different software has any effect

[alanp1995]

1 hour ago, emosun said:

the only thing you MIGHT try that can cost 0$ is install windows 7 onto a spare hdd and then try the gpu and drivers with that os instead. would help to know if different software has any effect

Gonna try that now ? 

[TheUltimateWeeb]

9 hours ago, alanp1995 said:

 

The thing that confuses me the most is the GPU works completely fine when booting and using Windows once the graphics drivers are not installed. I booted into safe mode and I uninstalled them and now it works fine, but obviously this is not ideal.

Actually, JayzTwoCents had the same issue. The way to fix it was to flash a different BIOS onto the card. Funniest thing is it is a 780, so there is not that many differences between your card and his. Here is the video:

 

[alanp1995]

On 8/10/2018 at 5:33 PM, emosun said:

the only thing you MIGHT try that can cost 0$ is install windows 7 onto a spare hdd and then try the gpu and drivers with that os instead. would help to know if different software has any effect

 

On 8/11/2018 at 12:00 AM, TheUltimateWeeb said:

Actually, JayzTwoCents had the same issue. The way to fix it was to flash a different BIOS onto the card. Funniest thing is it is a 780, so there is not that many differences between your card and his. Here is the video:

 

So just a quick updated. I tried Windows 7 and Linux and both did not work either. I updated the ROM on the Graphics Card to the latest available version, made very little difference. After installing the drivers, windows would boot but still would stutter like crazy, the driver would keep crashing and sometimes the computer would shut down by itself. Time for this GPU to head to the GPU graveyard