Vista - The display driver has stopped working and has recovered

Nope, opening the case makes no difference. It crashes even after a few seconds COD4, so heat can't be the problem.
Will use a oscilloscoop to look at the power supply voltages, maybe here's something happening...

I'm pretty sure it's a driver issue. Why? Because my laptop does the same thing when I try to watch IE video's, or at least it used to. My desktop did the same thing for a while. The thing is my laptop has an onboard ati chip and my desktop is 2 Nvida 8800gt 's in sli, cooler master cosmos case and 1000w power supply. No heat issues and the power supply is good. It's pure OS BS. I don't have the problem any more on either system. When I did have the problem awhile back, I did some searching my self and couldn't find much help any where, so I had to mess around with it my self. One thing you can try is uninstalling the drivers you have and then use driver cleaner pro and wipe the drivers completely out. Then make sure you have the latest drivers downloaded and install them. I did notice that my laptop worked better playing videos in full screen with the drivers downloaded from windows update, but those drivers suck for anything else. And since you're playing games, they just won't do. Another option is to reformat, which sucks but should take care of it if you get desperate.

Hi guys
solved issue "nvidia driver stopped working and has recovered" by disabling UAC. I run a dual xeon 3ghz, 16gb ram, on vista ultimate 64bit, and since disabling User Account Control i have no problems running games. So i guess it's a Vista problem not necessarily a nVidia problem.

sorry for the incomplete post,
I tested this solution on 3 videocards Quadro fx 5600, Gefroce 8800 ultra, Geforce 8800 gts, and all had the same issue before disabling uac, and work great now with uac off.

does anyone know if that solution will have the same effect on ATI graphics systems?

Hello,

Can I just add something. I had endless trouble with my 8800gt getting the freezing up and recovering symptoms. I tried everything possible (including going back to windows XP) and then gave up and tried an ATi 3870 and since then I have had no problems. The problems appears to be nvidia!!

Thats just my slant on things anyway!

Cheers