Can't play any game, sudden freeze and black screen

[Ymenoa]

Hello guys,
I installed CSGO from steam a couple days ago. A couple seconds after launching the game, my screen freezes, and then black screen right after, no blue screen. I need to reboot my PC every single time after crash.
I was doing perfectly fine with all of my other games (running TW3 in full ultra 1440p for instance, GTA V 1440p full ultra, etc.). This kind of crash->black screen never happened to me before.
Now, I can't play any game at all for more than a couple minutes before crashing. Can't still use the pc for web browsing though, only games are not working right now.
I'm getting mostly ntoskrnl.exe errors in my recent dumps, I'll link all of that in this message's attachment.

Here is my rig :
Windows 7 64bit Professional

Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD5H (F10 bios, 2015, latest)

Intel i7 4790K (never overclocked it) + Noctua NH-D15

4x4Gb DDR3 (do not remember the exact model but I bought this pack 5 years ago)

Gigabyte 2070S RTX WindForce OC 3X 8G (I used to have 2x gigabyte 770, decided to replace them a couple months ago for this 2070S)

Samsung SSD 840 EVO (120Gb) boot drive
Western Digital WD Blue Desktop 1To SATA 6Gb/s (mass storage) (5 years old)
Samsung SSD 850 EVO M.2 500Gb (game storage) (brand new)

(I'm sorry, I do not remember my PSU exact model, it's currently screwed under my case's metal protection, all I can remember is that it's a Corsair 700W modular PSU)

I (tried to) run through several diagnostics myself, here's what I've done so far:
- checked all drivers, everything is up-to-date.
- uninstalled and reinstalled my game launchers and games on my 2 storage disks, still the same result for whatever disk was used.
- uninstalled geforce experience, finally (tried my luck).
- ran several chkdsk on my disks, no error whatsoever, nothing special ticked my eye.
- launched my games for the few minutes, I was able to and checked my CPU / GPU temps, everything fine before crash.

- checked my bios for my CPU wattage, everything is set by default and I've never overclocked it anyway.
- w7 fully updated.
- ran a standard windows memory diagnostic to check on my RAM, nothing to notice.
- ran a couple cmd wmic MEMORYCHIP get BankLabel, DeviceLocator, Capacity, informationSpeed in the meantime, everything seemed fine.

I hope my message is clear enough, thank you guys in advance for your time and expertise.

MINIDUMP.zip

Edited December 23, 2019 by Ymenoa

[Ymenoa]

Bump ! 

[Whiro]

First try maybe DDU all drivers in safe mode, if that’s not gonna help I would try to reinstall windows.

[Ymenoa]

I uninstalled / reinstalled all of my Nvidia drivers (without GeForce Experience), then did a system repair from boot with the F8 menu, still crashing unfortunately. 

 

I've checked a couple forums about the latest Nvidia drivers and it seems like the latest driver for my RTX 2070S has a lot of negative feedback from people having a lot of trouble with it (441.66 WHQL, released on the 10th of December of this year).

Could this be the reason of my crashes ? 

Is there any way for me to download the previous Nvidia driver just before 441.66 ? I've checked a couple driver updater websites (including manufacturer) and they all only give the latest driver. Unless I've missed something. 

[Ymenoa]

I'm also planning to switch my OS to W10 in the coming days. 

[Whiro]

11 minutes ago, Ymenoa said:

I uninstalled / reinstalled all of my Nvidia drivers (without GeForce Experience), then did a system repair from boot with the F8 menu, still crashing unfortunately. 

 

I've checked a couple forums about the latest Nvidia drivers and it seems like the latest driver for my RTX 2070S has a lot of negative feedback from people having a lot of trouble with it (441.66 WHQL, released on the 10th of December of this year).

Could this be the reason of my crashes ? 

Is there any way for me to download the previous Nvidia driver just before 441.66 ? I've checked a couple driver updater websites (including manufacturer) and they all only give the latest driver. Unless I've missed something. 

Yes you can roll back to old drivers, try this :

 

Windows Vista or Windows 7 steps to roll back your driver:

1. Click Start 
2. Click Control Panel 
3. Windows Vista: Click System and Maintenance and then System or simply System (in Classic view). Windows 7: Click System and Security and then System. 
4. In the left pane, click Device Manager
5. Double-click on Display Adapters 
6. Double-click on your NVIDIA GPU 
7. Select the Driver Tab 
8. Click on Roll Back Driver

[Whiro]

10 minutes ago, Ymenoa said:

I'm also planning to switch my OS to W10 in the coming days. 

If that roll back not gonna help, try installing new fresh copy of windows (w10 may be good option for you now cos it’s loosing all support soon).

[Ymenoa]

I've done a clean install of W10 Pro using the Media Tool installer, and the problem still happens (freeze and black screen crash after 5 minutes of Overwatch). I'll link a minidump on my next message if it crashes again.

I've checked a couple forums telling some other people to check the BIOS settings for CPU, 100% of my BIOS settings are on auto so that shouldn't be the problem.

I'm starting to doubt the latest Nvidia driver is the cause of all this. I'll try and roll back to the previous 'most stable' nvidia display driver.

[Ymenoa]

I've also been monitoring my CPU and GPU temps + memory usage. I see really nothing weird so far. 

[Ymenoa]

So... guess I solved the problem. Been playing several games since my last post, it appears Nvidia's latest display driver 441.66 was the one at fault. I uninstalled it and installed the 441.41 version, and everything is working fine for now.

TLDR for the whole thread : had freezes on my games and black screens. Nvidia's 441.66 display driver is flawed. Rolled back to 441.41 and everything is working fine now.