Save my marriage! My wife's possessed PC keeps restarting - related to new graphics card?

[Chedster]

Hi all,

I upgraded my wife's PC to Windows 10 last month, and then found out her graphics card had no drivers for Windows 10. Being an old relic, I decided to replace it with a new PNY Geforce GT 720 card.

The PC now randomly restarts without warning, and having lost her work mid-flow, my marriage is seriously in danger unless I get this sorted soon! There is no determined time the PC decides to power down - just randomly.

I have wiped all traces of the old graphics card and reinstalled the new drivers again. This morning, I cleaned up the dust from the inside of the case and the components, removed the old thermal paste from the processor and put some fresh on (the CPU temp was idling at 65 degrees when I was in the bios, which I figured was quite hot).

The motherboard is the MSI P55-GD80, with the latest bios updates.

Any suggestions

 

[Darkbreeze]

I've been seeing a bunch of Nvidia card issues just lately. Most of them have been cleared up with clean driver installations, but I've been seeing a few that are common, with flashing white and black, then booting normally after a few attempts, that do not clear up with a fresh driver installation. I'm wondering if there isn't just a problem with the current Nvidia drivers on some systems. It doesn't seem to matter if it's an older or newer system, nor whether it's AMD or Intel. Just when you thought AMD had the buggiest driver issues, Nvidia reverts to bad form. Maybe. I guess it could actually be a bunch of bad cards though. Seems just as likely as anything else.

 

[Guest]

There probably IS a fix for your problem, but considering the time it may take to find it, this might be a better alternative as a starting point:


http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2784691/resolve-unresolvable-issues-upgrading-windows.html

Hmmmm, it's looking that might be my next step, I guess.

You know what's strange though? This exact same problem has been reported elsewhere online. Look at this (a review for the same GPU as this one):

I was beginning to think either Windows 10 or the video card, itself, was the problem. The power supply is ample for the video card. Whenever a new component is added to a system and things change, it's good to wonder about whether that component is working properly...

 

[Darkbreeze]

Looks like some of these issues have been cleared up with an older driver. You might want to try the previous driver version after using the DDU.

 

[ComputerSecurityGuy]

Except Windows 10 tries to automatically update to the current, flawed drivers. I do not like automatic updates in Windows for that reason.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Nah, you can stop that. Like this:

http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2763685/stop-windows-automatically-updating-device-drivers.html

 

[alexandergc]

What if, he tried starting up the PC WITHOUT the GPU attached and see how that goes?
Also, try putting in another HDD and run an installation of Windows 7/8 if possible.

Eliminate all possible causes of failure before you go ahead and buy/replace something.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Because neither his CPU nor motherboard has integrated graphics, so it's pointless.

 

[alexandergc]

Because neither his CPU nor motherboard has integrated graphics, so it's pointless.

Well then...that certainly throws a wrench in the proverbial gears... 🙁

Best choice would probably be running a live disk of Linux/Windows just to see if the system still boots properly, and that nothing is wrong with the hardware.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Running a disk bootable Linux disto isn't a bad idea either. At least then you'd know if everything works fine, it's a Windows issue.

 

[Grumpy275]

It is always advisable to make a clone of the C drive before upgrading from one operating system to another. If you did this I would suggest reverting to the old system. This would pacify the "Boss".

Unscheduled reboots in my experience are often due to heat problems The temperature you mention does not sound too high and you have done the first aid which I would have suggested. In the absence of anything else and assuming you have done a Virus scan I can only assume there is a driver problem which is rocking the boat.

As has also been suggested it could be the Power Supply. It never hurts to have a PSU which is capable of supplying more than required. There are some 850 Watt units at reasonable prices which are good for most applications.

 

[Dragos Manea]

It is always advisable to make a clone of the C drive before upgrading from one operating system to another. If you did this I would suggest reverting to the old system. This would pacify the "Boss".

Unscheduled reboots in my experience are often due to heat problems The temperature you mention does not sound too high and you have done the first aid which I would have suggested. In the absence of anything else and assuming you have done a Virus scan I can only assume there is a driver problem which is rocking the boat.

As has also been suggested it could be the Power Supply. It never hurts to have a PSU which is capable of supplying more than required. There are some 850 Watt units at reasonable prices which are good for most applications.

Are you kidding? A 850 W psu for a 200W system? The curent psu is perfect for his system, 41 A could handle a r9 290x/390x. No need to change PSU, yes your problems is related to windows 10, is well known that nvidia released bad drivers for windows 10 and causing issue like reboots, Microsoft even released a update that stops automatic updates for nvidia cards because of this issue. Your problem is related to windows 10, go back to 8.1 and the marriage will be saved.

EDIT: Windows 10 is to unstable for the moment, trust me i have dual boot on my main 10 and 8.1, and i had 10 on my notebook too, but reverted to 8.1, has too much problems.

 

[excallibur]

I tried a new gtx 970 with my 7 yr old corsair vx550 which stopped booting after a day,i took both my psu and my new graphics card to my friendly local pc repair shop who tested the psu on a meter (mine did it for free but yours might charge you or you can buy your own tester one off ebay for only around £5 ) which showed up a very low +5v reading,they also found the graphics card was knackered too,luckily i managed to rma the gtx and get a replacement and I bought a new psu and its now all working,If your psu is a similar age this might be your problem,get it tested and hope it hasn't broken your card like mine did,hope that helps

 

[Guest]

I tried a new gtx 970 with my 7 yr old corsair vx550 which stopped booting after a day,i took both my psu and my new graphics card to my friendly local pc repair shop who tested the psu on a meter (mine did it for free but yours might charge you or you can buy your own tester one off ebay for only around £5 ) which showed up a very low +5v reading,they also found the graphics card was knackered too,luckily i managed to rma the gtx and get a replacement and I bought a new psu and its now all working,If your psu is a similar age this might be your problem,get it tested and hope it hasn't broken your card like mine did,hope that helps

I'm pretty sure, at this point, that the poster here is having problems with Windows 10 and the driver he needs from NVidia to run his GTX 970. If he can go back to a Windows 8.1 installation his problem might be solved, or if he is able to turn off automatic updates for his NVidia card in Windows 10 and use an older, working driver - that might work, too.

He could test the video card in his own computer for a short time if he wanted to eliminate that as being the problem. I assume he has a computer for himself since the one he is working on is his wife's.

 

[g-unit1111]

I tried a new gtx 970 with my 7 yr old corsair vx550 which stopped booting after a day,i took both my psu and my new graphics card to my friendly local pc repair shop who tested the psu on a meter (mine did it for free but yours might charge you or you can buy your own tester one off ebay for only around £5 ) which showed up a very low +5v reading,they also found the graphics card was knackered too,luckily i managed to rma the gtx and get a replacement and I bought a new psu and its now all working,If your psu is a similar age this might be your problem,get it tested and hope it hasn't broken your card like mine did,hope that helps

I'm pretty sure, at this point, that the poster here is having problems with Windows 10 and the driver he needs from NVidia to run his GTX 970. If he can go back to a Windows 8.1 installation his problem might be solved, or if he is able to turn off automatic updates for his NVidia card in Windows 10 and use an older, working driver - that might work, too.

He could test the video card in his own computer for a short time if he wanted to eliminate that as being the problem. I assume he has a computer for himself since the one he is working on is his wife's.

I think it's more the fault of an extremely poor graphics card than anything else. And it seems like it came out of a really bad batch of cards after further examination.

 

[Darkbreeze]

As I said, running a portable Linux distro will verify if the problem is hardware or software. Everything else is just guesswork and nonsense.

 

[turbotown]

Check/replace your boot drives sata cable, they oxidize over time and can cause random restart issues.

 

[koolrambo]

Hi all,

I upgraded my wife's PC to Windows 10 last month, and then found out her graphics card had no drivers for Windows 10. Being an old relic, I decided to replace it with a new PNY Geforce GT 720 card.

The PC now randomly restarts without warning, and having lost her work mid-flow, my marriage is seriously in danger unless I get this sorted soon! There is no determined time the PC decides to power down - just randomly.

I have wiped all traces of the old graphics card and reinstalled the new drivers again. This morning, I cleaned up the dust from the inside of the case and the components, removed the old thermal paste from the processor and put some fresh on (the CPU temp was idling at 65 degrees when I was in the bios, which I figured was quite hot).

The motherboard is the MSI P55-GD80, with the latest bios updates.

Any suggestions

have you tryed to uninstall win 10 and reinstall win 7 or 8 as your pc may not like win 10 as it is not stable yet.
this may solve your restart issue.

 

[GObonzo]

Except Windows 10 tries to automatically update to the current, flawed drivers. I do not like automatic updates in Windows for that reason.

the latest AMD and Nvidia(with my 800 series M, anyway) drivers are fine with Windows 10 and it is perfectly stable if you've got it and it's correct drivers installed right. as long as you're using the correct ones and if you have the updates straight from the source and keep them up to date Windows will not update to the MS bundles because it has no need to. but like Darkbreeze stated, you can stop the updates from happening through settings.

@chedster,
quick peak through here and i don't see you listing what CPU. if it or the motherboard has onboard video just use that if it's only for basic work. the psu won't need the extra power for a dedicated graphics card if the corsair is the problem.
if it's some type of video editing or cad work then you would be better off getting a better setup though.

 

[Darkbreeze]

have you tryed to uninstall win 10 and reinstall win 7 or 8 as your pc may not like win 10 as it is not stable yet.
this may solve your restart issue.

That's not correct. Windows 10 is as "stable" as any other operating system. The problems that currently plague it are almost entirely third party driver issues, not issues related to the OS kernel or anything related to it being "stable". While that fault lies with both MS and the third party developers, there is little Microsoft can be held accountable for when these developers were given ample time, presumably about a year, to get their drivers stable on this platform. I can agree that perhaps this OS version should have been withheld, as prior versions were, until all the major players had stable, functional driver support for their hardware, but again, this is not the OS, it's the hardware developers.

 

[RoamingDog]

Hi all,

The PC now randomly restarts without warning, and having lost her work mid-flow, my marriage is seriously in danger unless I get this sorted soon! There is no determined time the PC decides to power down - just randomly.

Any suggestions

Could be either the power supply or the power control circuits on the motherboard. If you have another power supply available, even one temporarily removed from another PC, plug it into your problem system and see whether the problem remains or is solved. Case 1, the motherboard is fried. Case 2, get a new power supply.

A new power supply is a fairly cheap fix to extend the life of the PC, if that's your desire.

This equipment is growing old, so maybe you should put your money into a new system. If you go new, be sure to ask your wife whether an AIO or large-screen laptop would be a welcome change.

 

[g-unit1111]

Hi all,

The PC now randomly restarts without warning, and having lost her work mid-flow, my marriage is seriously in danger unless I get this sorted soon! There is no determined time the PC decides to power down - just randomly.

Any suggestions

Could be either the power supply or the power control circuits on the motherboard. If you have another power supply available, even one temporarily removed from another PC, plug it into your problem system and see whether the problem remains or is solved. Case 1, the motherboard is fried. Case 2, get a new power supply.

A new power supply is a fairly cheap fix to extend the life of the PC, if that's your desire.

This equipment is growing old, so maybe you should put your money into a new system. If you go new, be sure to ask your wife whether an AIO or large-screen laptop would be a welcome change.

Except that we've already determined that the PSU isn't the issue here. So if you go back and read that by process of elimination we've already ruled out:

- Motherboard? No. If it POSTs and runs the operating system, it can't be the motherboard.
- PSU? It's a pretty decent quality Corsair unit and boots the system just fine. This is not the culprit.
- Operating system? This could be one of the determining factors. Either a backup and a clean installation of Windows would solve the problem, or it could be a simple driver installation error.
- Graphics card? I would say that this is most likely the culprit. If the OP was able to boot fine before the new graphics card was installed, then that's exactly what is causing the problem. Relatively low end PNY graphics cards are well known in IT circles for causing lots of problems. The graphics card should still be taken out of the equation and seen if it works properly with onboard graphics. That will determine what the real problem is.

 

[Darkbreeze]

He has no onboard graphics, as I said before. He would need to locate or borrow another GPU card to do this by process of swapping out.

 

[GObonzo]

- Motherboard? No. If it POSTs and runs the operating system, it can't be the motherboard.
- PSU? It's a pretty decent quality Corsair unit and boots the system just fine. This is not the culprit.

appears you havent done much troubleshooting or repairing PCs. if either is damaged or going bad; power fluctuations from the PSU or the motherboard can and do happen very commonly after a system has booted. also, there are many connections coming from the motherboard that can die or wear over time that would still allow the system to boot and load but may not be able to handle workloads or extended use.

 

[jimmysmitty]

- Motherboard? No. If it POSTs and runs the operating system, it can't be the motherboard.
- PSU? It's a pretty decent quality Corsair unit and boots the system just fine. This is not the culprit.

appears you havent done much troubleshooting or repairing PCs. if either is damaged or going bad; power fluctuations from the PSU or the motherboard can and do happen very commonly after a system has booted. also, there are many connections coming from the motherboard that can die or wear over time that would still allow the system to boot and load but may not be able to handle workloads or extended use.

We have to consider the fact that just before he did this on the older OS with the older GPU it was fine. That says to me that it is the new GPU having an issue more than anything. That and the fact that another review for the same GPU on Newegg states the same problems the OP is having (look above).

That screams to me that the GPU is bad, not surprising since PNY is a very cheap brand that I would never recommend.

 

[GObonzo]

That screams to me that the GPU is bad, not surprising since PNY is a very cheap brand that I would never recommend.

yes, that's true. last PNY i bought was a geforce 6800 that showed only pink, black, & whites for color. RMA'd for a replacement and 2nd was DOA. that was the last time i bothered with them or would recommend one.