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Blue Screen

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Last response: in General UK & Ireland Discussions
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Hey guys, new to the forums so I'm not 100% sure if this is the correct place for this.

Anyway, I've recently been getting a number of BSODs now and then. They happen randomly, but only seem to occur once every few days from the looks of it.

All my drivers are up to date so I'm not positive as to what is causing the problem, however I heavily suspect it's to do with my video card, which is a GTX460 1GB (current driver is 285.62). I only say this because I noticed in the bottom right corner previously where a box popped up saying "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered." I thought of this as a one off so I didn't pay much attention to it, as this hasn't happened again. (The blue screen has happened prior to this box showing).

However a BSOD came about later after this, so I downloaded Driver Sweeper, uninstalled my Nvidia programs, rebooted in to safe mode, and got rid of ATI & Nvidia display drivers, restarted the PC and re-downloaded the appropriate drivers again. But this didn't clear the problem unfortunately. So I thought I'd try the latest beta drivers Nvidia has out, 290.53, but this didn't solve the problem either.

One other thing I noticed this morning also was the white flag (action center) icon, showing a message for me in the bottom corner saying that I had a "Video hardware error." I clicked on it to see if anything could be resolved but it only made a report for microsoft, so that's useless.

It could be something else causing this blue screen problem but I'm not sure. I have all the dump files but I've no idea how to read them to narrow in on what the cause is. If anyone could help with this that would be great.

I'm still under warranty but I'd rather not go through all the hassle and boredom.

It's got me stumped so could anyone with a much higher knowledge about this stuff help me identify the problem behind the screen of blue? As I've not a clue! (:

Much appreciated, thanks.

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A friend of mine has been having this very same problem for quite a while now, and I spent a considerable amount of time searching for a solution or clues that might lead me to one. Tried different drivers, but nothing seemed to make a difference.
Today, the system started failing right at start-up, and it was obvious that it was due to graphics board malfunction. So, I decided to extract it from the system and take a closer look at it. Unscrewed the heat-sink, and straight away realized that the thermal paste was completely dried out and definitely not doing its job. So, I scraped off and cleaned out all the old paste, and replaced it with a new thin layer of new paste. Took the opportunity to clean out the heat-sink and fan, and set everything up again neatly. After re-installing the board back in place, re-started the system, and to my great surprise, the system suddenly became completely normal and stable. Has been now, for a few hours, after stress tests with intensive graphics applications and games. After all this, it occurs to me that the problem may in fact be due to overheating of the graphics processor, and the defective dissipation of the heat produced.
So here's the suggestion: take some time to look at the hardware instead of the software. Make sure that you have a good heat transference between the surface of the graphics processor and the heat-sink. Might save you some time and a lot of headaches. It might be as simple as this... Give it a try...
 
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