Z63A graphics driver fails?

ok, this has been weird, and has happened to me on a couple of occasions.

on my Z63A, under the correct circumstances, the computer will lock up momentarily and then the screen will blank, then it comes back at the windows software VGA or whatever, 640x480 and 16-color. it's accompanied by a "your graphics system died" error, and then the microsoft suggested problem after the reboot is that my graphics driver is pooched

the exact circumstances this has happened under are: I will put the computer into suspend-to-RAM mode, come out of it when I get to class and am running on battery, start up OpenOffice.org Writer, be typing some notes, and then after a while I will go to use the touchpad to move the scrollbar, and the graphics system will crash.

I had the latest graphics drivers from Intel and touchpad drivers from Synaptics installed the first time this happened, so I switched back to the latest provided on the ASUS website and this happened again on Tuesday.

Any ideas? Well, other than the obvious "don't use STR"

 

If I'm understanding you correctly, I've had this issue once, a while ago. Some other users have also had this problem on their W3V, discussed here.

From what I can gather, the video card appears to have stopped responding to Windows, so it concludes that it is stuck in an infinite loop. Intel has some information about this here (though it's for another chipset). I spent a while looking when it happened to me, and basically the only responses I could find were "update your driver" or "it's a Windows problem, not ours". I got the error when I was grading some computationally heavy code a student submitted -- I got the error every time I tried to run his code, but I never experienced it otherwise, and his code didn't cause any problem on other computers, so I honestly have no idea what caused it.

If you've undervolted your system or made any other changes to the way Windows functions (TweakXP, etc), I'd try undoing them and see if it makes a difference. Other than that, the fact that it also occurs on the W3V (with ATI graphics) suggests to me that it's probably not specific to the video chipset -- maybe a bios issue? Other than upgrading to the lastest bios, I honestly have no idea what else to try.

 

Try getting your video drivers from the CD provided or get the latest one from the Asus support site (support.asus.com).

 

I've never experienced such an issue with mine.
I'm using the most current Synaptics touchpad drivers Intel graphics driver listed on the Asus website (Note: I'm using the drivers listed under the W3A, not the Z63a)

 

For my W3A, Intel graphics driver Version 6.14.10.4421 (according to its properties, but is version 1418 from the Intel website in early December), synaptics driver version 8.0.6 (from the Synaptics website) and not a hint of a graphics problem. However, I rarely use STR but use hibernate twice a day.

Might this be BIOS related? The W3A BIOS works fine with the Z63A.

John

 

I have the w3a BIOS, and the latest video and touchpad drivers from the ASUS support website

 

Is that really the error you get? Are you maybee getting an infinite loop error?

 

If you are running NHC 1.9Beta03 or Omega drivers, unload it and see if will happen again.. W3v graphics drivers are not compatible with Z63a.

 

As I mentioned above, I've had this problem once before too, and I was using the proper Intel drivers.

I really believe this must be a bios/motherboard chipset issue. Why else would it happen on both the Z63a (W3a) and the W3v, when the video chipset is different?

Yes Eddie, I'm fairly certain he's talking about the infinite loop error.

 

If it is the infinite loop error then that is a soft issue. Has nothing to do with hardware. Those may be different chipsets but the core is identical. I ran into this a few times before,...

 

I've experienced the exact same problem multiple times with my Z63A; I forget the precise error message, but it's something vaguely like, "the display driver (ialmnt5) has crashed; save your work and reboot" (there's no blue screen, thankfully).

If the error is caused by an infinite loop, it's possible that crash is related to another problem: HControl.exe sometimes goes beserk and maxes out the CPU (sometimes repeatedly activating one of the shortcut functions in the process). Upgrading to the latest version of ATK0100 didn't help. I recently installed the HControl replacement. So far, neither the display driver error nor the HControl problem has recurred.

 

Hmmm, that's interesting. I too have the updated HControl, and I've never seen this error since, but then again I haven't been using the same software that caused the problem to begin with.

BigV: if you're not using the modified HControl, could you try this and let us know if it has any impact on the problem? It would be nice to be able to pin down this issue so that we can recommend solutions the next time this question is asked

 

a little update...

I tried the HControl replacement, but it did not seem to work, despite installing as per the directions. The default functionality remained intact, but the changes the registry file was supposed to cause didn't take.

 

What changes did you make? Incidentally, the setting for the "Custom" button has no effect because the Z63A doesn't have that button.