dwm.exe error GTX970

[xanoth]

During the past week I've had an increasing number of issues where the screen flickers black on both monitors (all window contents goes black, boarders faintly show still).
I'm then logged out of windows 10 and if I chose to log back in the GFX card is disabled and needs to be re-enabled. Typically I just restart the PC as it keeps the window set up how I want it.
Initially it was just once a day, but today it's happened at least 5-6 times already and it's not even noon.

Steps tried so far:

• ■ Uninstalling the GFX card and installing fresh, as I installed it when I still used windows 7, hoped it was just a minor issue there. * Didn't fix
  ■ Every flavour of scan disk and device image check/scan I could find and think of. * Didn't fix, no issues with windows files or hard drive found.
  ■ Rebooting obviously doesn't fix it.
  ■ Rolled back drivers to 10-jul-16 version 10.18.13.6881. * Didin't fix, but happens less often (still hapened within 24 hours).

I'd rather not have to reformat windows

I'm not playing games, I'm doing nothing more taxing than using chrome with about 10 tabs open when this happens. PC is cool, no heat issues, no other stability or performance problems.

I don't get an error message about DWM.exe, so this doesn't seem to be like the most common results that come up in searches, I had to go digging to even find a reference to it, on the surface it looks like a display driver issue.

Event Log shows a DWM.exe error. It generates 1 of these errors per second for about 7 seconds (.07 to .14 on the time stamp), then the display driver is determined to be at fault and is shut down.

PC is old despite the GTX 970, Phenom II 955. 8GB of ram (never over 50% usage when the issue happens). OS drive is a 120gb SSD, 70gb of which is free, as I have a 500gb games SSD these days. Windows 10 fully updated, no previous issues with it.

Any other suggestions it would be greatly appreciated.

______________________________________

Event log dumps to follow:

Faulting application name: dwm.exe, version: 10.0.10586.0, time stamp: 0x5632d756
Faulting module name: dwmcore.dll, version: 10.0.10586.494, time stamp: 0x5775e327
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00000000001283a3
Faulting process id: 0x3d8
Faulting application start time: 0x01d1fac6bf5dc45a
Faulting application path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\dwm.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\dwmcore.dll
Report Id: 9a9054e4-7db4-4cd0-b5cc-31770ec7cfa4
Faulting package full name: 
Faulting package-relative application ID: 

Fault bucket , type 0
Event Name: APPCRASH
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0

Problem signature:
P1: dwm.exe
P2: 10.0.10586.0
P3: 5632d756
P4: dwmcore.dll
P5: 10.0.10586.494
P6: 5775e327
P7: c0000005
P8: 00000000001283a3
P9: 
P10: 

Attached files:

These files may be available here:
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportQueue\AppCrash_dwm.exe_8b9ca47f42f9e19fe7c8d2aa62299acfdb7dfb1_3cb49cc2_2aec3465

Analysis symbol: 
Rechecking for solution: 0
Report Id: 1c185f02-c036-4fce-8bb9-0f73b6aa3f9f
Report Status: 4100
Hashed bucket: 

Fault bucket 120508236267, type 4
Event Name: APPCRASH
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0

Problem signature:
P1: dwm.exe
P2: 10.0.10586.0
P3: 5632d756
P4: dwmcore.dll
P5: 10.0.10586.494
P6: 5775e327
P7: c0000005
P8: 00000000001283a3
P9: 
P10: 

Attached files:

These files may be available here:
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportArchive\AppCrash_dwm.exe_8b9ca47f42f9e19fe7c8d2aa62299acfdb7dfb1_3cb49cc2_05083dcc

Analysis symbol: 
Rechecking for solution: 0
Report Id: 8ef486eb-3a3e-42ea-bbeb-d74b0ab42944
Report Status: 0
Hashed bucket: 1786e19db3bd98d96e971c2e541cb4c6

System error events:

Display driver failed to start; using Microsoft Basic Display Driver instead. Check Windows Update for a newer display driver.
The Sync Host_5c7ad service terminated unexpectedly.  It has done this 1 time(s).  The following corrective action will be taken in 10000 milliseconds: Restart the service.
The Contact Data_5c7ad service terminated unexpectedly.  It has done this 1 time(s).  The following corrective action will be taken in 10000 milliseconds: Restart the service.
The User Data Storage_5c7ad service terminated unexpectedly.  It has done this 1 time(s).  The following corrective action will be taken in 10000 milliseconds: Restart the service.
The User Data Access_5c7ad service terminated unexpectedly.  It has done this 1 time(s).  The following corrective action will be taken in 10000 milliseconds: Restart the service.
The server {7006698D-2974-4091-A424-85DD0B909E23} did not register with DCOM within the required timeout.

Device Manager > Display Adapter

Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)

 

[xanoth]

Issue persists with July drivers, although seems less frequent, but it happened within 24 hours of the previous one so that's still too frequent
.
Issue always happens when I'm interacting with chrome, not sure if coincidence or related as I'm generally always using chrome when at my PC these days...