Vista - The display driver has stopped working and has recovered

Hello guys. I'm having the error on the title randomly when running any game... It was somewhat constant on Titan Quest, happened once on MOH: Airborne and never happened on bioshock or ET:QW

Today I was playing Counter Strike: Source with Bots. all running normally. I would start a server with 30 bots, but by the time the bots would appear on the map, I had the error again. The screen goes black, returns to the game with rendering failures, goes black again and I need to close the game.
The interesting thing is that if I overclock my graphics card a little, It happens more constantly! Power issues?

My rig:

Intel Core 2 Duo e6420 @3.3ghz @1.425v
4 gigs of G.Skill DDR2-800 (GBPK) Ram
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 Mobo w/ latest bios
eVGA GeForce 8800 Ultra KO w/ latest WHQL driver for vista (163.69)
Zippy 500w HP2-6500PE ATX Power Supply w/ 36A on the 12v Rail (35A recommended for the ultra on full load)
1x 250gb HDD Drive

any ideas?

Try the 163.71 beta driver??
Well i have this one and the same thing happens to me, but give it a try

well, that hotfix for nvidia users would fix that, but it doesnt, i think.
im thinking about something with power, because if I overclock it happens more constantly... maybe the power supply is not enough? it should be...

up

Odd,

I purchased a 8600gts so that i could dable with DX10 and see if its worth buying top end hardware for on my gaming pc. This started happening almost immediately while playing world of warcraft using the latest nvidia driver (not sure of number, im at work but the latest one that is WHQL certified) I thought since it was a crappy card that maybe it was overheating which made sence since it has a small/cheap fan and heat-sync combo. I popped my 7950gx2 back in and the problem never came back.

I thought it was odd to happen in a game that isnt a resource hog and shouldnt be over heating my card. I thought it was heat because it surely couldnt have been a power issue considering i run a 7950gx2 without a hitch. I didnt consider the possibility of a driver issue though.

I have all the hotfixes from MS and NVidia and still had the problem. I didnt look into it much because the card was just to try some dx10 games and see if the difference was worth the switch and it seems like it wasnt worth it yet, maybe with the dx10.1 stuff it will be more of a noticable difference. Right now that card is in a spare pc doing nothing more than citrix & remote desptop connections for my job.

if it happens with your GF8 and not with your GF7, big chances of a driver issue there.
heat? possible, but i dont think so. my 8800ultra runs at 68 idle and 80 load (thats not much for a G80, it handles 100 and more). the overclocking did not increase the heat, but did increase the errors
power issues discarded, because my PSU SHOULD handle this 8800, and so do yours which handles a 8600

Ok so I have a ATI x1950Pro Iceq by HIS in Crossfire mode. I was constantly getting the "driver has stopped working and recovered" message after exiting games, and during games when the driver would crash the screen would go blank for about 5 seconds. I had tried several different versions of the driver, which I also thought was a little odd because so many had said that the ATI vista drivers were a lot better than the nvidia drivers. I have other PC's with vista, one with ati and one with nvidia, never recieved the message, but then never tried the same games (Crysis, Medal of Honor 4).Then I saw someone post a link where MS said it was usually the hardware at fault, not the driver. Thought it was the usually scapegoat tactic, and my diagnostics said temps and everything were fine for the card(average 55c, topped at 65c). However, I decided to open up my case, and use an old archaic method of touch to see how hot it was. Not only were my cards understandable hot, but my MB and the overall graphics cards were extremely hot! Under RivaTuner the 'ambient temp' was equal with the core temp (65c), and that was right were it would always start to crash! I had several fans already so I never really thought it'd be heat, but the moral of the story is now, 3 additional fans later, one installed directly on the graphcis cards, everything is working just fine, so make sure it's not radiant heat spreading to the rest of the components, or even different parts on the same component; the GPU may be made to handle high temps, but the rest of the components aren't, and with 2 big freaking cards, there's a lot of heat to go around.

Sounds like it could either be a PSU issue, GPU overclock issue or it could be driver issue. Try getting a new PSU and then put the GPU back to standard clock. If it is a driver issue, well, you've got to wait for NVIDIA/ATi to fix the problem.

I have a Saphhire ATi Radeon 3650 overclocked at 800 MHz w/ its DDR2 VRAM OC @ 525 MHz with a stock cooler and I have no issues playing Crysis on medium settings (1280x1024).

help mines doing the same thing i can't play cod2 without the screen going black and freezing up but i can play multiplayer just fine with no problems help!

mine too. Screen turns black for about 5 seconds and then the game is continued.
I have no idea what can be the problem, still thinking it has something to do with heat.
I have a Sapphire 3870x2 card, have even replaced the card with a new one. At first my complete system would hang if the black screen issue accured. Now with the new card, it recovers from the hang but it's still very annoying.
It looks like it happens more often when running high resolutions (ie 1600x1200)
My PSU is a BeQuet 650W which should be good enough.
Will try running the system in cabrio mode (take the cover off) so the heat can escape more easy.