Any basic diagnosics for Nvidia cards?

Peter Wade

My desktop PC stopped working a few days ago. I thought it was a Windows failure because Windows 10 wouldn't start but I'm not so sure now. I re-installed Windows 7 from DVD and it worked until I installed drivers for my GTX 590 graphics card, and then it crashed with the Blue Screen of Death on startup every time. It works in safe mode, and if I de-install the drivers and restart it starts up in normal mode but the card is now just running as a generic VGA card. I've run the scanner on the Nvidia website that checks for the correct driver and I've tried the previous version of the driver from their website but with the same results. My current theory is there might be a hardware fault in the card that is crashing the driver and bringing Windows down but I don't know any way to test for this.

If it is a faulty graphics card I might be able to replace it but before I pay hundreds of pounds for a new one I'd like to confirm that this is the problem. I've searched but all I can find are ways of testing a working card to check it's performance. Does anyone know of any software that can run diagnostics on a GTX 590 without the Windows drivers loaded?

 

Taoz

PC-Doctor Toolbox - a hardware testing tool - has a general video card testing feature. Don't know if it's useful in your case though.

http://www.pc-doctor.com/solutions/toolbox

 

 

sriesch

If you have access to a second computer and/or graphics card you could swap the graphics cards.  If the problem moves to the 2nd computer, then presumably the problem is either the card or it's associated software.  If the problem persists with a different card, then your card is probably fine.

Can you find older (or newer) drivers anywhere, even if you didn't back up your original ones that were working?  Every so often I've had a flaky driver and had to skip that version to prevent problems from happening.  I've gotten into the habit of having the last two or so versions saved just in case I have to roll back to them.

Peter Wade

I only have one desktop computer so swapping graphics cards is not an option. I did try an older version of the NVidia driver from their website but with the same result. I might try going back through all the versions they still have avaialble but I don't have much hope in that.

Since then I had a look on the Dell website and ran their online scanner. They came up with different drivers and these also fail but they fail differently. No BSOD this time but the screen is just plain black, no display and no response to the mouse or keyboard but the monitor doesn't drop into power save so it must be putting out a video signal. The hard drive light flickers so it looks as if Windows is probably running but with no display there's no way of telling.

I might try taking the card out, take it a local computer repair shop and ask if they would be willing to put it in a PC and try it out. The only other alternatives seem to be buying a low cost card and hope that fixes it or just give up on this computer. I've installed Studio, Bryce and Carrara on my laptop and I'm installing Poser now. I haven't tried using them yet but its a bit of a step down, half the memory, less than half the CPU power and AMD graphics so no hardware accelerated Iray.

mrinal

You can try the free MSI Afterburner or EVGA Precision X to see if they detect your card. I use the afterburner to monitor the temps of my card. You can also try the MSI Kombustor (part of Afterburner) which is a stress testing utility to see if the performance is up to mark.