Frequent "Graphics drivers stopped working, have been reset" error

[Roam]

Pretty much what the title says. Recent bouts of frequent error messages. First the screen freezes up for a second or two, then goes back to normal with the message from the title popping up in the bottom right.

No new drivers (in fact, been sticking to my 11.12 Catalyst suite, because I have never NOT had trouble after updating ATI drivers), relatively new card and motherboard. Started noticing it mostly when playing Minecraft (related to JAva 64bit maybe? I dunno).

Card is a Radeon 5870.

What do? =\

[TZeer]

Sweep drivers
Reinstall drivers
Profit?

[Roam]

Sweep drivers
Reinstall drivers
Profit?

Done. Didn't help. Will do again.

[Cassiuss]

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/27...ped-responding

Possibly? (scroll down to the yellow solution)

[hXc]

it's overheating/is overclocked too much
check temps, then act accordingly

[Roam]

Not overclocked, have been checking temps and is running at normal temperatures. Idling at around 40-50, which should be fine.

Found an article via google that recommends setting the Catalyst option of manual fan speed to a constant 70, because supposedly the automatic one is shit. Could that help (is that even true?), or will that reduce the longevity of the fan by having it constantly running?

Did another sweep and reinstall in safe mode. Will check if it made a difference this time. (Install was fine, whereas in the past I always get a "install completed but one or two random warnings", maybe driver sweeper didn't remove everything last time and that was causing a conflict.)

Edit: Cassius, that link might just be what I needed! Looks exactly like my issue, because it specifies that the problem only occurs during relatively idle times. Going to give it a try when I get back, many thanks and +rep to you sir.

[Cassiuss]

SO the article I posted didn't fix the issue? o_0 sounded very similar.

Here is the workaround:

Open CCC and switch to ATI Overdrive
Unlock and enable Overdrive
Go to Options/Profiles/Profile Manager and create a new profile called, let's say, STABLE.
Save the new profile. But DO NOT ACTIVATE the profile.
Now go to C:\Users\{YourUserName}\AppData\Local\ATI\ACE\Prof iles folder ( I assume C: is your system drive )
Note: You should have " show hidden files " turned on to see the folder.
Open the .xml file named STABLE with notepad.
Change the values of the idle Core clock and Memory clock speeds below

Feature name="CoreClockTarget_0"
Property name="Want_0" value="40000" note: previous value should be "15700"

Feature name="MemoryClockTarget_0"
Property name="Want_0" value="90000" note: previous value should be "30000"
Save the file and close it.
Go back to CCC and activate the profile. This will make the card idle at 400 MHz core clock and 900 MHz memory clock.

The speed change is immediate. You can see the speeds onder CCC Overdrive section.

Please note this change increases graphic card temperature by 6 to 7 degrees C at idle.

Those having issues under load,such as gaming, should not need this workaround.

Hope above helps.

[hXc]

Not overclocked, have been checking temps and is running at normal temperatures. Idling at around 40-50, which should be fine.

Found an article via google that recommends setting the Catalyst option of manual fan speed to a constant 70, because supposedly the automatic one is shit. Could that help (is that even true?), or will that reduce the longevity of the fan by having it constantly running?

Did another sweep and reinstall in safe mode. Will check if it made a difference this time. (Install was fine, whereas in the past I always get a "install completed but one or two random warnings", maybe driver sweeper didn't remove everything last time and that was causing a conflict.)

Edit: Cassius, that link might just be what I needed! Looks exactly like my issue, because it specifies that the problem only occurs during relatively idle times. Going to give it a try when I get back, many thanks and +rep to you sir.

idk, but I had similar problem, all temps looked fine until after a month i checked them in gpu-z and one of them, which wasn't shown in any other program, was at 120C (TIM wasn't applied properly)
if you did use gpu-z, then idk

edit: funny thing: at one point I even thought that my mouse drivers were the cause, because they crashed in developer mode right after W7 loading screen

[Roam]

SO the article I posted didn't fix the issue? o_0 sounded very similar.

Here is the workaround:

Open CCC and switch to ATI Overdrive
Unlock and enable Overdrive
Go to Options/Profiles/Profile Manager and create a new profile called, let's say, STABLE.
Save the new profile. But DO NOT ACTIVATE the profile.
Now go to C:\Users\{YourUserName}\AppData\Local\ATI\ACE\Prof iles folder ( I assume C: is your system drive )
Note: You should have " show hidden files " turned on to see the folder.
Open the .xml file named STABLE with notepad.
Change the values of the idle Core clock and Memory clock speeds below

Feature name="CoreClockTarget_0"
Property name="Want_0" value="40000" note: previous value should be "15700"

Feature name="MemoryClockTarget_0"
Property name="Want_0" value="90000" note: previous value should be "30000"
Save the file and close it.
Go back to CCC and activate the profile. This will make the card idle at 400 MHz core clock and 900 MHz memory clock.

The speed change is immediate. You can see the speeds onder CCC Overdrive section.

Please note this change increases graphic card temperature by 6 to 7 degrees C at idle.

Those having issues under load,such as gaming, should not need this workaround.

Hope above helps.

Haven't tried it yet, since I just got back. Had to go out.

Does sound exactly like my issue, so good hopes!

[hXc]

out of curiosity: how changing idle values can affect anything under load?
or minecraft is not using gfx card at all (I've never played it)?

[Roam]

out of curiosity: how changing idle values can affect anything under load?
or minecraft is not using gfx card at all (I've never played it)?

Well, it's never happened with any game actually active. It only happens when I'm browsing or using word or something, but since the occurence of the issue and me installing minecraft coincided I figured it may be related. But yeah, it only happens when the gpu SHOULD be in idle mode, not under load.

Also, turns out the newer versions of Catalyst have removed the whole custom user profile thing. Or at least, I can't find it, so not sure where to apply those settings. I'll figure it out though.

[hXc]

oh so it happens when you're not playing minecraft then :3
that changes everything

[Roam]

oh so it happens when you're not playing minecraft then :3
that changes everything

Yeah, but minecraft is always on even when I'm not actively playing, so that's why I included it. v0v

Anyway, I tried cassius' fix, seems to be holding steady now. Will try it an evening and report tomorrow if this fixed it. Thanks all, much <3

[Roam]

Hm, it's actually getting more frequent now, and without the supposed profile function that was removed from CCC, it's not remembering the changes I make to the profiles.xml file.

The file isn't read only either.

[hXc]

check temps with gpu-z especially the gpu2 and gpu3 values

edit: oh and do it under some load, watch for unnatrual spikes, like gpu1 is raising steadily and slowly while the gpu 2 and 3 are raising much quicker and above safe values (80-90C)

[Cosmin]

I would be curious too about a solution, laptop user here, Quadro 3000M, dies and recovers in Windows several times the locks up completely - power button necessary. Activities when this happens = totally random (movie/game/browser/calculator).

Temps fine, system clean, installed/cleaned/reinstalled until optical mouse went blind.



Must be something lately totally unrelated to games but more to usual updates that go unnoticed (e.g.: like Flash acceleration in the browser maybe)? A lot of my friends are complaining, PCs couldn't be more different among us and it doesn't matter whether it's NVIDIA or AMD, mainstream gaming or pro graphics...

:confused mode on:

[Roam]

Well fuck, now I'm getting blue screens.. ati.sys. Graphics card is less than half a year old, I can't imagine its broken already O_o.

[hXc]

bluscreens means that after a crash and trying to restart drivers, driver couldn't find gfx card - it stopped working, usually this happens when the temps are too high

sounds exactly like what happened to me: card had less than 2 months and started to crash, right after getting new drivers. same things: frequent crashing even when it was supposed to idle (actually your card rarely idles especially when browsing web - even such a small spikes in heat can crash the system)
for me it was temp issue - part of the die wasn't covered properly with TIM, after reapplying it worked


and I did too rule out temp as a cause at first - every single program showed they were fine, only gpu-z showed 120C on two parts of the die (which I checked after two weeks of having crashes)
I checked 8 versions of drivers, including 3rd party ones, then RAM, PSU, CPU, even ff mouse
in the end it was what I heard every time I sent a ticket to a support - check the temps, it must be temps

[arian snow]

I would think it's RMA time. The only other thing I can see that it could be is the PSU, so you could try another PSU for a while. If that doesn't fix it, RMA!

Just a word of warning disassembling the card will void your warrenty, if they find out.

[Luna Lee]

If you're getting bluescreens then use Bluescreenview to read the dump file created from a bsod. It should help narrow things down.