NVidia drivers crashing after using OBS

[smitchell28]

A few days ago I tried to stream myself playing the Witcher 2 using OBS. Prior to this I have played the Witcher 2 on this system almost every other day or so without any issue. After about 20 minutes of streaming my gpu drivers go into this strange crash and recover cycle. I had to cold shutdown to even make it usable again. I uninstalled OBS and tried playing the Witcher 2 normally without any stream setup but the game would play for a few minutes then the gpu drivers would crash. Each time I tried to play the time between crashes grew shorter until the I can't even get to the game menu any more. Same issue with all of my currently installed games (Witcher 2, Borderlands 2, and Dota 2). The symptoms changed slightly only today as now when the drivers crash the screen goes black then comes back but the game window is transparent and the game is not responding.

Things I've tried thus far with no positive results or change whatsoever:
1. Reinstalling drivers - Didn't work. I'm going to try out drivers that are a month old and see if that fixes anything.

2. Restore point - I recovered from a restore point from before installing OBS.

One thread with a similar issue suggested that I underclock my gpu mem speed but I really want to save that as a last resort. I can use my PC fine for every day function for now so I can stay patient for a more proper fix than purposely making my expensive equipment underperform.

My specs are as follows:
i7-4770 @ 3.4GHz
12 GB RAM
PNY GTX 960 4GB
MSI Krait Edition mobo
Corsair CX850M 850W power supply

If there is any other information you would need please ask. I like to think that my descriptions are explicit yet concise lol. Please any help would be appreciated!

 

[renz496]

Driver version?

 

[smitchell28]

Driver version?

Right this moment I have version 353.62. This was part of trying older drivers. When the issue began I had v355.82. The symptoms have not changed between the two.

 

[smitchell28]

I think I figured it out. I have a first generation M-Audio Fastrack audio interface acting as my sound card. This cards drivers have always messed with everything in the past due to the fact that drivers for the first generation of hardware cannot be found anywhere especially not from M-Audio or Avid.

Anyways, I tried Borderlands 2 this morning and same issue. I got the wild idea to just unplug the damn M-Audio and started Borderlands. Voila! Worked just like it used to. I'm going to try reinstalling my M-Audio Drivers and report back in the next week hopefully with more information on why exactly this is interfering with nVidia's drivers.