Nvidia GT 650m Driver Crash

Hi,

I posted this on the Nvidia Forum, but I think this forum is more active.

I'm having a strange issue with my Nvidia Geforce GT 650m on my HP Pavilion dv6t. It won't completely idle, but pulses. That is not really an issue, the problem is that the driver could actually crash randomly, most notable using Chrome. When it crashes, the system is fine, just the GPU is listed as "generic SVGA." I can't reinstall it, but have to reboot and it automatically restores it. When the GPU is in use during gaming, it has no problems. So this is more of a nuisance that I am hoping to resolve.


https://ibb.co/Sxd6qS7

Originally I did not have this problem. But then my motherboard burned out 4 yrs ago because I didn't take care of it, I replaced it with a new one. The new mobo came with a new 650m. The moment I installed it, it has this issue, despite all the software are identical so I guess it is not a driver issue. I honestly don't know what is causing it? I can only expect it has to do with the hardware itself. I'm using a 352.86 driver, but I'm reluctant to upgrade b/c I actually had to rollback before b/c the new drivers caused a lot of bugs and errors, completely ruined StarCraft II, wouldn't even load the game.

So for a while, it was tolerable and even for a long while it didn't crash. But recently I made 2 hardware changes.

1) I repasted my thermal paste with Grizzly Kryonaut. This thing is awesome and it made everything run cooler, made the GPU run almost 5-10 degrees cooler on load.

2) I installed a mSATA drive

Now both of this should not affect the GPU, I think? At least the repasting should've improved it. But since then this crash seemed to happen more frequently, even when not running Chrome. The biggest issue is that when the driver crashes, the Win OS cannot sleep. If the laptop is on during this time, it seems to run the fan on very high when it tries to idle I assume it is because the GPU got hot. Anyways, appreciate any input.

Thanks!

 

That's weird, have you tried using DDU and completely blowing away the driver and reinstalling it? Looks like the latest Win7 driver for the 650M is 425.31. I don't know why it wouldn't work for something like SCII.

 

I guess I had a bad experience with the one right after 352, which wrecked my system and I had to roll back. But following your suggestion, I installed 425 and it resolved this issue.

Thank you so much!