Computer Advice (Display Driver Error)

[JohnH]

Today my computer suddenly started complaining that "Display Driver stopped responding and has recovered".  It happened about 5 or 6 times within a couple of hours.  One time the computer rebooted.  I'm  running Windows 7, dual monitors.  Any suggestions? How about having the video card replaced? I'm probably going to replace the computer by year end, but just wondering if I can come up with a short-term solution for the next 5-6 weeks.

[jklcpa]

You could check to see if there's an updated driver available for your hardware, and be sure to make a restore point beforehand in case something goes wrong and you want to roll back to the earlier driver.

[ILLMAS]

I had the same problem with a Dell XPS, I was using dual monitors and the video card finally went out, but it only affected one monitor, I am the awkward person with two monitors but only uses one of them.

[JohnH]

That's interesting.  Overnight I was thinking about changing settings to a single monitor, just to see if that made any difference. That would seemingly narrow the problem down to the video card, wouldn't it?

[ILLMAS]

The port that failed on my computer was the HDMI, VGA still works,  are you using an HDMI connection?

[JohnH]

No. Both are VGA. But thanks for the additional input. 

[Lee B]

I am also running Win 7 Pro and have had the device driver error message from time to time, although I only run 1 monitor.

The most i have ever experienced is 2 or 3 times in one week. Recently it's only happened once or twice in the last 6 weeks.

Most of the time I think it has happened, when I have spun the scroll wheel on my mouse too aggressively or  I have clicked my mouse

with an imprecise location perhaps confusing my computer.

[JohnH]

Thanks for the advice and suggestions.  I decided to take it over to a computer guy I've used a couple of times before when I needed work on my MacBook Pro. After we talked about the various possibilities, he offered to sell me a refurbished unit he had in his shop.  It's a Lenovo Think Center Core i5, 16 GB Ram, 240 GBSSD, graphics card for 3 monitors, and Vipre Life Anti-Virus.  He cloned my existing Hard drive over to the new one, plus he upgraded MS Office for me.  So after a wait of about 4 hours or so, I brought the setup back to my office, plugged it in, and am back up & running.  Total cost was $590. 

I still have the original Hard Drive and a SATA/IDE self-powered cable, so if it turns out anything is missing I can (hopefully) pull ot off the original HD.

Glad to get this done before tax filing season rolls around.

[Tax Prep by Deb]

Hate to be the one who imstills fear in anybody, but I would never biy a refurbished computer and here is why:

A few years ago one of my business clients purchased a refurbished computer and after a while had weird things happen then porn started popping up all over the.place.  He would close it out and it would come right back up.  I did some sluething with my limited experience and it turned out someone had remoted in and was watching porn on this computer.  It turns out the owner of the shop had been arrested earlier in the year and charged with child pornography.   We called the police who came and took the computer and we have never seen it since.   So as tempting it may be I would not recommend it for that reason.

[JohnH]

Wow.  That is scary. Makes me think I should at least change the administrator password for logging in.

[Catherine]

13 hours ago, JohnH said:

I should at least change the administrator password

Absolutely.  And set up a SECOND admin account, in case login for the first ever gets corrupted.  That dodge saved my bacon once, long ago, when my account *and* my admin acct logins both got corrupted on the same day -about two weeks before the close of the tax season!  (I also took it as a warning that machine was getting flaky, and changed the machine itself right after the season closed that year.)

[Roberts]

Encrypt the hard drive with bitlocker which if it has Win10 Professional - is on your computer.

If you don't have the PRO, a $15 program called Hasleo Bitlocker Anywhere does the exact same thing. (I also used the program to encrypt some USB drives and an SD Card where a store a bunch of stuff.)

You'll need to enter a password for Windows to even boot so your entire hard drive is encrypted.

 

If you don't log in remotely to your computer you may want to block remote access. System / Remote Settings / uncheck.