Hi dunkinkid22
Thanks for your message.  I have now tried 3 times to install the latest driver 260.99 following step by step your procedure, but the black screen (BS) hang up repeats.  Just before this happens the monitor sends the message POWER SAVE [INPUT 1]  (occasionally [INPUT 2] although I have only one video display attached).  I have attached the video card to the power supply Corsair HX 620 directly by the two PCIe cables of Corsair.
 
Most of the times the BS hang up is triggered by some application, but a few times at random.  My computer performance score has been set 3.4 due to the previous Asus 7300 card, and if I try to update that, BS death occurs invariably , but in this case the video card's fan sets spinning at the maximum speed as I can hear from its noise. Other times, the fan does not speed up. EVGA scanner gives the fan speed 30% when Windows 7 is running.
 
I repeat, I installed the latest driver 260.99 by going to safe mode every time after uninstalling the nvidia driver in Windows, deleting any previous driver trace by using Driver Sweeper, rebooted in safe mode again and did clean install without ticking the box for nvidia audio driver, then rebooted in Windows, disabled the High Definition Audio in System device (DeviceManager) the one that has the same PCI bus as the Nvidia 460 (PCI bus 1 in my case) and rebooted. My motherboard is Asus P5E, it does not have on board sound, I did not install Asus Audio driver. Asus P5E has X38 chipset, I read somewhere nvidia drivers do not like P45 chipset, whether it is the same for X38 I cannot say. In that case it will be a hardware conflict
 
I am completely at a loss.  I will appreciate further help if you can give me.  Interestingly, I could not trace someone complaining about this in the web for Asus or Gigabyte or other GTX 460 manufacturer's cards.  It seems to be EVGA cards specific. In most cases some application is triggering BS, but a few times at random also !

Hello everyone,
 
I hope I can get some help here to my very similar problem.
I got my EVGA Gefore GTX470 some days ago as a replacement to my GTX 280. 
I resintalled Win7 64x right away along with this new card.
Since that moment on I was getting black screens and blue screens. Interesting part is, that these only occur on certain situations:
1. Blackscreen whenver I watch a video (youtube). The video is loading while showing a green video. Sound is playing. After 1-5 seconds I get a Black Screen, the driver "crashes" and seems to recover and a Blue Screen follows immediately. (I get that Tooltip about the driver)
 
2. A couple of times I also experienced the Blackscreen + reboot when I logged into Windows, but not so often.
 
Funny thing is, I do not get any problems at all while playing games. I tried this on World of Warcraft with "Ultra" Settings and also on Starcraft 2 with max. Details, etc. Not a single crash or anything alike.
 
I followed several "guides" that stated that it might fix the issue but without any luck. Also this guide here didnt work for me.
 
Any other ideas, besides sending the card back?
 
Help would be very much appreciated!
 
Thanks to all!
 
My system:
Windows 7 x64
EVGA GTX470 SC
EVGA 790i Ultra SLI Board
8 GB OCZ DDR3
 
 
EDIT: After some more experiments yesterday night, I was able to figure out that the Black/Blue Screen does not happen when viewing .avi Videos. But happens 100% when watching .wmv oder .mp4 videos or youtube.com. Maybe this is useful? 
The system is a fresh install and does not have any programs at all on it except Avira Antivirus and the Graphic Drivers.

@dunkinkid22
With respect to your latest mail -
1. "additionally please set the cards power setting in nvidia control panel to perfer maximum performance" -  NVidia control panel as installed during driver 260.99 installation has the version no 3.4.772.04.  It does not have any option to adjust the cards power setting.
 
2. "did you install the surround drivers?" - What do you mean by "surround" drivers ?
nVidia driver 260.99 gives option to tick only the following:
i   PhysX System Software
ii  HD Audio Driver
iii  Graphics Driver
iv 3D Vision Driver
Which ones in the above list are the surround drivers ? 
 
3.  "please reinstall 260.99 using my method" - 
There are a number of steps unclear here.  
You say in your original mail  - " Download Driver Sweeper and driver cleaner and install them".
In the internet I could find only the tool "Driver Sweeper" which I have installed, but no utility called "Driver Cleaner", although a number of places advertise for "Driver Cleaner".  If I dig into those sites with the heading 'Driver Cleaner', I invariably end up with something like the "Registry Mechanic", or "PC Tools". Could you please point out where can I download the "Driver Cleaner" ?
 
By trying repeatedly, I have come to this picture:  there are two types of cases wheere the Black Screen hangups are occurring. One, triggered by specific applications, e.g. trying to play You Tube, where the screen first flashes the message POWER SAVE [INPUT 1] and immediately BS death occurs.  The second case is where no such message POWER SAVE is flashed by the video, but the screen simply crashes with BS - one such instance is if I try to refresh in the Device Manger my computer's performance score.  In such instances mostly the gtx 460's fan speeds up to the maximum value as I could ascertain from the noise of the fan on the video card. Otherwise the fan runs at 30% rpm always. 
 
I am not running any games of any kind, I surf the web, email and do normal office type work.
 
Thanks and look forward to further advice.  

@sankar
1. the power setting is named "power management mode"
2. driver sweeper is fine
3. the 3d vision driver unless you are using it
 

@sankar
there is a power management mode under 3d settings
 

thought id join to let you guys know im having the exact same problem i boot up then when windows shows its blue screen i get artifacts sometimes leading to a reboot or if i get a full boot and goto do something i get the black screen.
my setup is:
 
q9550
4GB corsair xms ddr
asus p5n-d motherboard
zotac gtx 470
HAF 922 tower
700watt OCZ psu
 
nothing is overclocked all temps are fine and motherboard works perfect with my old 8800gtx even in sli, its a fresh install of win7 ultimate x64 and ive tried all the steps from OP and drivers from 197 to 260 im at a loss with this so gonna take my card back to the store with video evidence of the artifacts and black screen but knowing my luck it wont happen for them lol

its been 2 days returned to the store and the manager says he hasnt had any problems testing the card so wants me to take my tower in to see what the problem is even though i dont get no problem running 8800gtx sli so looks like for some reason it is my motherboard not playing nice i think :(

@ Dunkinkid22 ran this last time with no problems but now i cant follow guide as the graphics card locations dont match the hd locations
 
ie
graphics card 1 is location pcie bus 2
graphics card 2 is location pcie bus 4
 
(my cards are in pcie 1 and pcie 3) 
 
Nvidia high defination audio there is eight of them
2 are location 0
2 are location 1
2 are location 2
2 are location 3
 
please advise as i had major issuses trying reinstall drivers also my microsoft vga drivers where failing to install after removing 260.99 through device manger then removing nvidai files reboot login in safe mode ran driver sweeper.
 
Then standard vga will not load in and nvida drivers kept failing physx ect had to reinstall a full back up from august but still having issuses, i have finally got the 260.98 drivers installed but cant remove nvidai hd sound
 
Whats your thoughts

well i got my card back BUT replaced my asus p5n-d motherboard (realtek audio built in) with an msi p35 neo2 (realtek audio also) and card is running no problems so dunno what the problem was as it wasnt drivers or my card and the asus worked perfect with 8800gtx sli lol

alot of people are not uninstalling the actual driver in safe mode..
as a reminder windows sometimes has a hard time unistalling things that are in use.. when you boot into regular mode those nvidia drivers are in use.. so please uninstal; the physx and surround drivers in regular mode THEN reboot into safe mode and run the nvidia uninstaller then driversweeper then reboot

Still getting the black screen on game start up/close/changing the graphical settings. Anyone suggest anything as I am getting quite annoyed now, I can't play any games unless they are windowed.

HI! For everyone with this problem! I had the same problem like you all (Logon Screen freeze and following black screen) and what i did was calling the support telling them off my problem. Then i was sent a BIOS-update for the graphics card (.iso to burn on CD) and from now on everything is fine! Got the newest 260.99 drivers installed and i dont have these annoying freezes anymore! Would suggest you guys ask for this BIOS update on the support hotline and maybe EVGA could put this information into a thread so that everyone can see!
 
Sorry for the english, im from germany and my english is not perfect ;) hope you understand it anyway!
 
Have a nice day and i hope i could help anyone having this problem too! =)
 

HOsh1@ Called Evga about the Bios update and they said they didn't know about it yet. Maybe it's new?
 
Also having same problems on my system. running Windows 7 x86. Been fine for three weeks and suddenly freezes. After that, everytime I try to go into windows with a graphics driver installed it freezes at the welcome screen. Can get into safe mode. I have tried reinstalling windows and installing the driver first thing with no internet connection and following the directions on this thread to no avail.
 
The funny thing is I saw a few times getting into windows successfully after leaving the computer off for a while, but then it does the same thing again.
 
My labtop broke down (Also because of nvidia integrated Mb failure) so I lived without a computer for three weeks and now this happens for my new one lol.
 

@H0sh1
 
guess that's possible.
 
Anyway, mine started working again randomly after leaving the computer off for some time. This is really wierd. Every piece of electronics I have does this. I guess I'll see how things turn out before I submit for an rma...

They probably just upped the 2d voltage with the modded bios.  I had a feeling it might be this because alot of the black screens happen while surfing and watching videos.  You can do this with Nibitor and NVflash if you know what you're doing.  Something else I've noticed is that my GTX 470 doesn't downclock with the newest driver (260.99).  When I was using 258.96 it would drop to 50 mhz core but with the newer one the lowest it will go is 405 mhz?!?