NVIDIA drivers randomly shut down

Okay first up system specs:
intel 920i7
3gb ram
GeForce GTX275 OCX
Vista Home Basic 32bit
nvidia drivers with update installer (currently using newest beta)
Monitor Samsung SyncMaster P2450H

I am constantly getting the fault report -graphics driver shut down but windows has restored eventually followed by program shutdowns. This has been going on for some time but seems to be getting worse. Some programs it happens more often with (shutting down as much as 13 times in half an hour) but it appears to be completely random regarding graphics performance. Something like Aliens v Predator on full settings can work fine but something like World of Warcraft or even my web browser can fold frequently and vice versa.
My case has 7 fans in addition to the onboard GPU fan which i have now set to manual control at 70 percent thinking it could possibly have been some overheating issue with the factory overclocked card. I have tried older versions of the drivers with the same result. I have tried reducing graphics on all programs where this seems to happen more often with no difference in the ammount of shutdown. This would suggest it is nothing to do with overheating or the GPU (I considered reducing card settings using ntune but am loath to mess with the factory settings). I never had these problems with XP but I upgraded my CPU at the same time as I switched to Vista. I can only surmise that given the fact that I have tried more than 5 different variations of the NVIDIA drivers that it could only be a Vista problem.

The next step for me will be to wipe my entire computer and re-install XP which as you can imagine I really dont want to have to do. But it's getting so bad that unless I find another solution I will have little choice.
Any advice would be most welcome.

did you clean out the old drivers after uninstalling them? try this

Guru3D - Driver Sweeper (Setup) download from Guru3D.com

then install the new driver package and then also install the latest directx update.
also note that an older driver set may work better for some hardware and apps than the latest.

wheelsmith said:

did you clean out the old drivers after uninstalling them? try this

Guru3D - Driver Sweeper (Setup) download from Guru3D.com

then install the new driver package and then also install the latest directx update.
also note that an older driver set may work better for some hardware and apps than the latest.

Click to expand...

I hadn't done this but have cleared the old drivers now and reinstalled the new ones. The problem persists. Could this possibly be a directx issue? - because thinking about it I didn't have any of these issues until I changed from directx9 and then directx10 to directx11. I'm sure things were still ok while i was still using 9.

Tried what you suggested but the problem persists. Could this be a directX issue? I'm sure things were fine until I changed from directX9 (to 10 and now 11).

Hello MrMuse,
Have you replaced the chipset drivers with the latest set from Asus ?.

Also, do you have another video card you can try, just to eliminate the card.

Is the video card getting enough power ?.

Do you have anything overclocked ?.

I don't think this is purely a Vista issue, so you need to check your hardware compatibility, power supply, and drivers.

It may be a good idea to just check your file system, open a command prompt as administrator and type sfc/scannow press enter and let it scan, if errors are found you may need to scan more than once.

I also don't think that a re-install of XP will necessarily fix the problem.

Hope this helps, good luck and post your results.

chipset drivers are up to date
my power supply is rated as the best of its kind and can easilly handle 3 cards. i have just one card and apart from the 7 fans no unusual power consumption.

sfc/scannow produces a "not a command" type error
I dont have another card i can test with. Nothing is overclocked by me but the factory settings on the ocx version of this card may be already too high. the core clock is rated@ 709mhz (v633 standard), shader 1566 (v 1404), memory 2484 (v2268). These seem unusually high for a 275 but given BFG's lifetime guarantee I would expect it to remain stable at those settings. I've tried running a few programs with a directx9 launch instead of dx11 but that clearly isnt the problem as it still produces the black outs. Sometimes they only last a second, other times the program will shut down after a while but often when i close a game ill have a q of maybe 30 "your graphics driver has shut down but windows has restored it" error msgs.