Windows7 Ultimate 64bit tower with 8Gb ram:
Hi all. This card (which must be 2 or 3 years old) has been functioning ok up to now, but it's recently started to display weird screens.
If I leave a game (say, Zuma 2) paused then go away and leave it for a while, when I come back the screen is often littered with little green squares.
Usually Ctrl\Alt\Del shocks it back into life but sometimes it freezes completely and I have to reboot.
I've tried a variety of GeForce drivers (using Display Driver Uninstaller in between installs) without making any difference, so the last time it happened
I removed the card via the Control Panel, rebooted then reinstalled the card with the original driver CD.
But the problem remains.
Does this sound like the card is faulty? The fan is working, BTW, in case anyone thinks it's a heat thing.
Advice would be appreciated.

When is the last time you cleaned the dust out of the card's heatsink?  Just because the fan is spinning doesn't necessarily mean that the air is flowing well.

Thanks Guys:
Erik: Re the card - I have no way of telling if it's faulty. The PSU - it's a 600w ACBEL 6600 and, like the card, it's had very little use. It has two dedicated PCIE power leads so unless one of these is loose, I don't know what else I can try. The slot - well, there's only one 16x PCIE on the  board so all I can do is pull the card, uninstall it and clean out any remnants of drivers, then reinstall with the original EVGA CD. Maybe just pulling it out and replacing it might 'freshen' the install. But the last time something like this happened, I seem to recall it turned out to be the card itself.
 
ty_ger07: Thanks, I'll clean the card thoroughly when I pull it out.
 
Jaeson: Program settings seem to be governed by Global settings. In there, Power Management is already Adaptive. VSync is on 'Use the 3D application setting'. Not sure what this is about - it must have defaulted there. The options are On, Off, Adaptive, Adaptive (half refresh rate), and the 3D setting already noted. What do you think?
 

I've just come back to the PC after leaving it idle for 24 hours. I'd left the game 'Mystery Case Files - Shadow Lake' paused.
 
The 24" screen was liberally sprinkled with around 150 blue, green and yellow squares, about 6mm square. Also, Firefox (30) had crashed, and it wanted to send an error report, so I clicked it and it went. I'd half expected the machine to be frozen but it sent the error report OK, then a few other clicks cleared the screen of the small squares.
 
Firefox started OK and reloaded the 12 or so screens I'd had sitting there, and the game resumed without a problem.
 
Other games? Only Zuma 2. But I have a feeling that it might do this without a game being involved. Unless it's a machine ram issue. There's 8 GB of that. The card has 1GB.
 
I'll make a point of leaving the machine running with nothing else by Windows loaded, and see what happens.
 
Re the card: Can these things fail or become faulty with symptoms like I've described?
 
Cheers :-)
 
PS: Did I mention the system is W7 64bit?

Just resumed the Shadow Lake game and no probs for a bit then suddenly the screen flickered then the colors distorted. The game dropped out and I got back to the desktop to see the whole display switching on and off. Managed to spot a message in the tray about "...display driver..." then the pc rebooted. Came to with a Box - 'Windows has recovered from an unexpected problem'.
In the box it says:
---------------------------------------------------------------
Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name:    BlueScreen
  OS Version:    6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.1
  Locale ID:    5129

Additional information about the problem:
  BCCode:    116
  BCP1:    FFFFFA8006D5B230
  BCP2:    FFFFF8800F24693C
  BCP3:    0000000000000000
  BCP4:    000000000000000D
  OS Version:    6_1_7601
  Service Pack:    1_0
  Product:    256_1

Files that help describe the problem:
  C:\Windows\Minidump\082314-17612-01.dmp
  C:\Users\Porty\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-43305-0.sysdata.xml
---------------------------------------------------------------
The xml file seems to refer to installed Windows processes or components, but it was multi-page and I wasn't sure where I was supposed to look. Here's a portion below
---------------------------------------------------------------
<FILENAME>igdkmd64.sys</FILENAME> <FILESIZE>10629184</FILESIZE> <CREATIONDATE>10-13-2011 00:05:50</CREATIONDATE> <VERSION>8.15.10.2555</VERSION> <MANUFACTURER>Intel Corporation</MANUFACTURER> <PRODUCTNAME>Intel Graphics Accelerator Drivers for Windows XP(R)</PRODUCTNAME> <GROUP>Video</GROUP> </DRIVER> -<DRIVER> <FILENAME>iirsp.sys</FILENAME> <FILESIZE>44112</FILESIZE> <CREATIONDATE>07-13-2009 21:59:33</CREATIONDATE> <VERSION>5.4.22.0</VERSION> <MANUFACTURER>Intel Corp./ICP vortex GmbH</MANUFACTURER> <PRODUCTNAME>Intel/ICP Raid Storport Driver</PRODUCTNAME> <GROUP>SCSI Miniport</GROUP>
---------------------------------------------------------------
I was just about to look for a minidump viewer when I saw your reply. What's needed for that?
Cheers :-)
 

Sajin, I don't think this card is a clockable model. I know I haven't clocked it. As well as not knowing how, I prefer to rely on the basic properties of my GFX card.
 
Re the minidmp file, I managed to scan it with NirSoft's BlueScreenView. It looks like the files it spotted in the crash dump are:
dxgkrnl.sys
dxgmms1.sys
nvlddmkm.sys
 
I assume these are all gfx related?
 
Re the PSU, as I said above in post #5: " - it's a 600w ACBEL 6600 and, like the card, it's had very little use. It has two dedicated PCIE power leads so unless one of these is loose, I don't know what else I can try"
 
I guess I could check the voltage of the GFX power leads but I'm not sure what other tests to run. Or I could connect some adapters to a couple of the regular spare 12v lines and see if the thing is any steadier after that???

When you say 'Test', do you mean 'run it and see if the same errors come up'?

Heads up: Actually, I'm not sure it was the card at all - it could have been something to do with the Rextron KVM switch that I was using to connect two different towers to one monitor, keyboard and mouse. The monitor was connected via DVI\VGA adapter because the switch was a VGA type.
 
But after I changed the Philips 24" 240B monitor for an Asus P248 (much better), dumped the switch and connected to the GTX 560 by DVI cable, it seems to be behaving. There haven't been any glitches since.
 
Hopefully, that's the end of it.
 
Thanks for the advices :-)

If you want to run the latest games a later driver is preferred.