Constant crashes/freezes during gaming

[vampireknigh]

Hello!

i've been struggling with a problem for about a year now.

Whenever i play games, i sometimes get a black screen and the sound gets stuck.

In most cases the computer needs to be restarted, but if i manage to ALT + TAB quickly enough, there's a good chance i can spare myself the restart and only the application crashes (proccess needs to be killed in task manager).

If the alt+tab version works, i get some error like "GetDeviceRemovedReason", "NVIDIA display driver has crashed and has now recovered" or some other Direct X related error.

I have tried new OS, got a new graphics card, ran countless burn-in tests and benchmarks to test everything in my system but none of the tests showed anything interesting, nor did they manage to produce a similar crash.

After trying countless fixes, i am now suspecting it is a motherboard problem, as underclocking the VGA seems to produce less crashes, and the VGA can't be faulty as it happened with the old one as well.

What are your thoughts on this? I've grown pretty desperate as i can't replace my motherboard just like that ( i would need to buy a brand new PC along with that).

I am running windows 8.1 pro (64 bit) if that helps.

If you need any other information please get back to me!

Thanks for your help in advance!

 

[kfarris]

Need your PC specs. Install http://filehippo.com/download_speccy/ and run copy/past summery in a reply.
It sounds like a bad overclock or perhaps your power supply is too small. There is some tests we can try.

 

[vampireknigh]

Thanks for the reply, i will tell you the exact specs once i get home.

I have changed config since i have this error and i had the same error with the old VGA, which wasn't overclocked or anything. Back then, cleaning my PC with a compressor made it work for a few months without this crash.

I tried the same thing now and it crashes immediately. Also the crash seems to be happening in every game when similar graphical effects are displayed, mostly cloudy / dusty ground effects and foggy areas in general.

 

[kfarris]

It could be either something wrong with the graphics card or your power supply just can't supply enough power to it while under load anymore.

 

[vampireknigh]

Well i had the exact same crashes with the old graphics card and the old power supply. The current power supply is 600w, card is GTX 960. I've tried forcing constant voltage through MSI Afterburner but it didn't help.

 

[kfarris]

Does your CPU have onboard graphics? If so try running off that and just load up a game if it crashes then it's gonna be most likely a ram problem.

 

[kfarris]

Actually, it may be a ram problem.

Did you mix and match ram? Have you tried running a mem test?

 

[vampireknigh]

http://speccy.piriform.com/results/oQij3NMxoV3JLt6CrXQOrUH

I didn't mix the RAMs but i ran several memory tests and they reported no problem.
I also had different RAM in my old PC and the crash still occoured with the old ones.

As far as i remember, the only hardware that stayed the same since my last config is the motherboard.

 

[kfarris]

Are you putting the ram in the correct slots? For example slot, A1 and A2 are what you should have the ram sticks in so there should be a space between them. The ram slots are labeled on the motherboard as well as in the manual.

So if you have it next to each other you are essentially putting the ram in slots A1 and B1 which tells the motherboard to treat them like different types of ram instead of putting them in a paired multichannel mode. etc...

 

[vampireknigh]

There is space between them. Do you think there is any way to know if it's a motherboard problem? I've seen test software for pretty much everything else and none of them reported anything so i'm pretty sure the problem lies there. I just don't know if there is a way to fix it without buying a new one.
The most common fix to this issue i saw on the forums was going into the BIOS and changing the PCI-E slot from some number to another one, but i don't have that option in my BIOS and i don't think i can upgrade it to a new version either.

 

[kfarris]

Are you running off an SSD or Hard drive?

 

[vampireknigh]

HDD. I've tried putting the crashing games on the other hard drive but it didn't help.

 

[kfarris]

Have you tried checking to see if the hard drive is failing?