random black screens of death

I recently updated the nvidia drivers for my GTX 260M and I've been noticing that completely randomly the screen appears to shut off. This has not happened to me while I am playing a game or anything that would stress the card, but when I am staring at a desktop or reading wikipedia. After the screen blacks out, the computer still responds to pings and is connected to the internet somehow, but will not respond to keyboard input or make sounds or anything, and must be hard powered down with the power button

I have no idea what is causing this, it doesnt happen very often (and not even at important times)
I just switched back to my 9400M and I'll use this for a while to see if it also happens.

I should also mention that I hadn't used the GTX 260M for a long time (few months) not sure if it not being used would affect it

 

What drivers are you using?

 

I take it you have an R1? How old is it? there warranty left on it?
And did you get the drivers from dell? Try a roll back restore to before you installed them.

 

its about a year old, not sure if I'll still have warranty when I get home.
Using 257.21 drivers atm, it seems to be doing just fine minus the weird crashes
I can't even reproduce the blackouts, it happens at most once if at all each day and never if I'm using the 9400m

 

okay I switched to the 260 and it happened again about an hour in, except the screen didnt blank, just froze.

 

There has been issues with this driver for other people too, It appears to be a flash problem on websites.
Try using 197.84 from Dell, These have had good feedback so far and no random crashes and black screens

(Dell Driver 197.84 Here)

 

that would explain why it always seems to crash when I'm using my browser, I'll try rolling back the driver