lf techies - BIZARRE video card problem

[Ron Burgundy]

ok, let me first start off by saying that my comp has been running flawlessly until about two days ago.

as i was installing diablo 3, i decided to update my ati drivers to cata 12.4. after i got to about lvl 4 thats when for the first time my computer completely locked up on me. i had to manually reboot after that.

you would think that by completely uninstalling the 12.4 driver and going back to 12.3 would fix my problem right? WRONG.

for whatever reason, whenever i have ANY ati drivers installed (new or old), my computer will freeze and lock up at any moments notice. it is very random but it happens consistently all the time. i have no idea what to do.

i think my video card overheated?

it's an ati radeon 5970 btw

i'm posting this without any video drivers installed (hello 800x600 screen) because this is the only way i can ask for help.

someone please give me some ideas

[Zyzzyx]

Did you do a complete removal of the ATI drivers? Or did you just uninstall via control panel? Find a program that completely removes the drivers and all traces, and try one more time with the previously working driver.

[Firebert]

Find a program that completely removes the drivers and all traces, and try one more time with the previously working driver.

Driver Cleaner Pro, use it in Safe Mode.

[SpaceDuck]

you would see game artifacts (texture stretching, yellow flickering pixels and general glitchy things) when a graphics card over heats before it crashes your system

either use driver sweeper in safe mode (or some other driver removing software) to remove all forms of ATI graphic drivers, or you can manually remove anything that is ATI (like CCC which is catalsyt control center or something, been a while since i've had an ati card :P) through the add/remove programs and delete any folders in the program files which are ATI

you also said you installed the drivers while you were installing diablo, probably not the best idea. tried reinstalling diablo as well?

[Firebert]

you would see game artifacts (texture stretching, yellow flickering pixels and general glitchy things) when a graphics card over heats before it crashes your system

If a GPU is overheating and it's relatively new, it'll force-shutdown the system before any damage is done. They usually don't sit there and melt. Not any more, at least.

[Allerick]

May or may not be related, but my wife's computer did something similar. After upgrading the ATI video driver (I forget which card atm), WoW and D3 would occassionally hang or crash. I was able to find some things in the event log with similar timestamps and traced it to a service called Server which was trying to run a query and failing. I shut off the service and now the hang / crash problem is gone. However, we still have a problem where her screen goes completely grey or black and doesn't come back from it. I don't know what's causing this one yet, but I'm suspecting the video driver so far. I'm hoping it's not related the service.

Moral here: check your event log and see if anything else is happening at about the same time.

[Deleted]

Fast and dirty solution to outrule any software issues: format c:\

[Milkshake86]

Now I have no idea what windows your running on but Win 7 natively supports 1920x1080 and as such on build day i was running 1920x1080 pre drivers.

Lol im still on Catalyst 12.1 and having 0 problems w/ any games however i know i was getting BSODs from 12.2